Reflections on Pluto’s Early Time in Aquarius

Hey everyone, this is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology. Today, we are going to take some time to reflect on Pluto's journey through the sign of Aquarius. Pluto is backing off and is about to retrograde into the very last degree of Capricorn for its final work in that sign that will be happening September into November if I remember correctly off the top of my head. And so, I feel like it is a nice time to reflect on the sign of Aquarius.

I have a practice as an astrologer of jotting down notes as especially slow-moving planets are working through signs. To me, there's no textbook greater than just living and observing and getting to know a sign through a significant transit, especially from the outer planets, because they move so slowly.

So, I have five things that, as an astrologer, that's always learning that I have been noticing about the sign of Aquarius. I wouldn't say they're all brand new insights, but their insights have been deepened and sort of refined, and certain nuances have crystallized as I've watched Pluto in Aquarius, not only in my own life but in the lives of so many clients and students and so forth in these first couple of experiences that we've had of Pluto working through these early opening degrees of Aquarius, so I am going to tell you five things I've been learning about Aquarius today through Pluto's early transit so that's what we're going to focus on today. Hope you find this enjoyable before we get into it.

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Now, I'm going to turn our view to the real-time clock here. Alright, here we go. So what I want you to notice is very simple it is that Pluto is at zero degrees of Aquarius retrograding, and if we take this forward just a little bit, I want you to notice Pluto will move into Capricorn, where we are on September 1. We have the change happening from September 1 into the second, so I was right. It is September. I thought it might have been the last day of August, so it was a little bit.

Alright, so then Pluto gets back into Aquarius, and this is about November 19 into the 20th, so September, October, November, we got to What about like 80 days, 80 to 90 days somewhere in there of Pluto in Capricorn remaining. And as this last transition from Capricorn to Aquarius is taking place, I've been, like, you know, reflecting a lot on the sign of Aquarius.

One of the coolest things that happens when Pluto travels through any sign is that the unconscious dimensions of life in that area of life in your chart become manifest. It's as though there are eruptions from time to time as Pluto is transiting through a sign and house in your chart from the unconscious that changed your life and transformed you from the inside out with sometimes more devastating effects than others. But it is a planet that puts us in touch with the hidden and unseen dimensions of life.

But the other thing it puts us in touch with is that if you're a student of astrology, it puts us in touch with the unseen or unconscious dimensions of the sign itself. In other words, the way in which unconscious material appears will be in line with the sign and the psychological and archetypal qualities of the sign. And so one thing you could look for with Pluto in any sign, but now in the sign of Aquarius, is what are the unconscious dimensions of this sign? People sometimes make the mistake of equating the unconscious with something dark or evil or malevolent or bad; unconscious material should be made conscious.

That would be like saying to me, and I'm not the first person who said this. But to me, that would be like saying that the subterranean, the deep realms of the Earth that exist below the surface, just shouldn't be there. The only thing we should get is above the ground, where we can clearly see it. Like, you know, how, if someone said that, like, I don't think there should be anything underneath underneath the surface of the Earth, not deep layers of, you know, subterranean material.

No, no, none of that should exist; there should be nothing there; the only thing we should get should be up where we can see it, so although there are sometimes appropriate ways of equating the unconscious or the unseen with something evil or, malevolent, or dark in moral terms. That's not the only way of understanding what the unseen or unconscious or invisible dimensions of life are.

So, let's start there. Now, so what I want to talk about are five things about the sign of Aquarius that I've been noticing because one of the normal parts of what Pluto does is to make the unseen kind more; it helps it put us in touch with things that are more unconscious or invisible or subterranean.

So what are the unseen, unconscious subterranean dimensions of the sign of Aquarius? That is part of what you get to see if you are experiencing astrology from the standpoint of being a student of astrology. So anyway, that preamble out of the way, there are five things that I've been noticing about the sign of Aquarius that I came up with because I like lists of five.

So the first one is that I have a practice of asking the planets to teach me in my dreams. Now, you might ask like, well, first of all, anyone can do this; I'm not special. I just literally just asked the planets to teach me in my dreams. And if you just keep knocking and asking, they will show up in your dreams; I feel very confident that if you sincerely humbly ask without any desire other than the desire to learn, that if you ask the planets to show up and teach you something of astrology, especially if even if you have like a very specific question, your dreams are a wonderful place for the gods to show up and speak. I got that idea.

Not so much just because, well, here, here's how I got the idea of just being completely honest. I worked, as many of you know, for a very long time, about a decade of my life, very seriously with psychedelics in ritualistic ceremonial, intentional settings, settings with guidance and safety and respect and reverence for spiritual purposes. Most of those involving Ayahuasca; what I learned is that the dream state is very similar to altered states in general, whether it's through psychedelics or meditation or prayer, or, you know, anyway in which we alter our state, they all share something in common, which is that we often get in touch with things that are more unconscious or more unseen.

So anyway, that being said, I had this method which was born out of the ayahuasca experiences I had, which imparted to me that you can access this connection to the planets that you're having during altered states, which is one of the most interesting ways that I was learning astrology was studying astrology, and then having regular ceremonial work with Ayahuasca that kind of continued that continued to help me unpack what I was studying. It is just the altered state that was conducive to learning astrology and really getting to know archetypes in these kinds of images that stick to otherworldly experiences.

Anyway, so okay, I'm going to ask the gods to teach me in my dreams. One of the dreams that I had, which was just outstanding, was I asked for an understanding of Aquarius. And so this was years ago, by the way. And I was like, well, I need to understand more about Aquarius. And I had a dream that I was standing at the foot of the judge's bench, you know, in a courtroom where they sit, they sit behind that kind of, almost like a throne of justice. And I was standing at the bottom, and this throne of justice just went up and up and up, like way up into space, like deep outer space. And at the top, like, a figure appeared, and I couldn't say if it was a man or a woman because it was just so beautiful. But it had this figure had long, flowing white hair, and its hair fell down over the throne of justice. And there were stars, like these beautiful stars, a constellation with imagery and stuff embedded in its hair that was flowing down over this like a pulpit. You know, there's justice, bench, or pulpit. And as I looked up, I realized this isn't a moral judge, like a judge of good and evil.

This is more like an architect who judges things like shapes and lines and angles and symmetry, as well as math and physics and science. It was like a celestial, a celestial judge of space and time and proportions and symmetry. And it was a very different image of judgment and justice, like an architect slash judge. I was like, wow, okay, that's pretty deep. I thought about it for a long time, you know. And then what's interesting is that this summer, Pluto went over my South Node in my 10th house. I have a South Node in Aquarius conjoin, and the Midheaven is pretty fitting for what I do for a living.

But anyway, as Pluto was going over that South note, I had a dream about the judge again. And this dream, I want to say, was like 2013. It was early, and I started astrology full-time in 2010. So this was, like, early in my career, when I had that dream, and it was, anyway, so. So, I was reflecting on this. And I was thinking, you know, one of the most beautiful things about the sign of Aquarius is that it is that 20,000-foot architect, from the eye of God's perspective.

That's why Aquarius has long been associated with the architecture and design of cities and aquifers associated with the architecture, architecture of science and celestial mechanics, and astrology. And so there is something about Aquarius that has this distant, vast, all-encompassing, sort of architectural and, I want to say, scientific, but in a more holistic sense, perspective.

So, that faculty of judgment has to do with understanding how everything works and looking at things to see if they're in the right place or not. One of the things that, by its very nature, is that the material world is a reflection or a rippling image on the surface of the water of the tree that's outside the water. And so the archetypal world that Aquarius is in touch with where, you know, that celestial judge is like forging archetypes in the fires of, you know, eternity.

For example, when that figure looks down upon the Earth, we're getting an image of the archetypal and celestial mechanics that underlie manifest reality, which is so Aquarian. However, that very same faculty of that higher perspective is always going to look at this mirror image, this image of the tree rippling on the surface of the water, as a copy, not an original, and therefore falling short. You know, it's like when you look in the mirror, it's that same faculty of judgment that allows you to pick apart.

You have an image of your ideal self, and you look in the mirror, and you start picking apart what you see because you're holding it up against some kind of ideal image. Aquarius puts us in touch with ideal images that exist in this sort of celestial architect's workshop. But by nature, it is like by nature of what that is; it will always give us a perspective of the material world, and the material world is going to be judged as falling short of the ideal because this world is like a moving reflection. And so when you look in the mirror and judge anything against an ideal, often one of the things that come as criticism, criticism itself, and the faculty of judgment is a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, the faculty of higher judgment, the kind of architectural eye of Aquarius, allows us to see the potential for improvement in the material world. On the other hand, it also constantly has the potential to judge and critique this world as falling short of an ideal eternal form.

Okay, so one of the things that happens in the sign of Aquarius that we have to constantly stay on guard for is the tendency to judge this world as not good enough to judge ourselves as not good enough. You know, there's a bodybuilding contest called Mr. Olympia, which is very Aquarian in the sense that the competition is all about trying to get the body into the ideal, perfect form. And you know what, for the most part, I mean, I've heard coaches in the bodybuilding, more bodybuilding world talk about this. It's grueling and punishing for the body to push it to the level that bodybuilders do.

I'm interested in bodybuilding as a hobby, not like that insane level of it, and you know, all respect, but like so. The faculty of judgment is a blessing and a curse. That celestial architectural judge with the hair trailing all the way down from the top of the bench is something that the perspective of grants us an ability to see the archetypal and to see what is possible and to judge and delineate what could be better and how it could be better. But holding Earth to Heaven's standard, in a hierarchical sense, is always going to present us with the feeling of not being good enough, that the world, that society, society, oh, that it isn't good enough.

That's one of the curses of Aquarius to Ganymede is the water bearer, the water pourer, that talented human that's abducted by Zeus and taken up to Olympia, and he's a cupbearer of the gods. Aquarius has to do with the human being who is blessed or privileged to somehow get close to the knowledge or perspective or realm of the gods, the archetypes, the ADA, and the archive.

You get there. What a blessing! Now you can see, like those of us who study astrology, what a blessing it is. We can see the unfolding of archetypal fields of energy and patterns. And we have something of an understanding of the deep, celestial, spiritual karmic mechanics of the universe. We have a we have a little understanding of it. It sets us apart. Sometimes, it alienates us from other people. It's hard to just drop into the human experience when you're like, oh, yeah, but Uranus and Mars are getting together this weekend. And, you know, you know what I mean?

So, the close proximity to the gods to an understanding of how things work, or from that large, huge Olympian perspective, it places us in touch with divine knowledge, but divine knowledge is, by its very nature, alienating and somewhat dissociating. Believe it or not, for all of it is all of the progressive qualities of heavenly knowledge.

It feels like, oh, look, we're learning something that's really interesting and progressive, and it puts us in touch with something really special and sacred. It also tends to generate disgust with human beings and with the Earth and with the body and with just like normal embodied life on Earth, even though we don't tend to think of it that way. And we might be like, Well, I'm not disgusted. I love and embrace the Earth or whatever. But the truth is that the more you know about something like astrology or any kind of divine perspective, the more you will have a tendency to not feel as though you belong. In the earthly community, the more you'll have a tendency to look at the earthly community who's not in touch with these things, that's like asleep and ignorant, and maybe they are.

Or maybe there's just a part of it; it's like if you want to join Club Aquarius, just get ready to have some level of disconnect and maybe disgust for the human earthly experience, just like something you have to be aware of. The other thing that Aquarius tends to bring up is a view of history and progress, which is both a blessing and a curse. Because Aquarius sees the archetypal and the archetypal as numinous and ideal and sort of perfect, it's like a perfect triangle in the mind of God.

When you walk around with a connection to the archetypal forms, whether it be through Tarot or the I-Ching, or human design, or gene keys are like anything, and you're in touch with these archetypes, there's a way in which you will start projecting them onto the very timebound linear view of history that human beings are often held captive by.

So Plato said time is the moving image of eternity, which means, in a sense, we should be careful not to buy into the idea of a progressive linear storyline that's unfolding. Historically speaking, I should just be careful of that. Because from this ancient standpoint, time was cyclical; for example, or time, there's a kind of a causal, eternal quality to life and reality. And we don't see it because we're caught in an experience that's a part of our consciousness and our constitution that perceives things moving in a kind of linear sequence. But anyway, the reason that this is problematic is that insofar as we are caught up in a linear progressive, you know, understanding or experience of time, event A leads to event B and event C, we take that archetypal judging faculty, and we project it forward in time. And we say the archetypal lies at the best possible endpoint of history.

This is sometimes present in like, you know, sort of Messianic religious imagination, the Messianic religious imagination, apocalyptic end times, we project forward either a devastating collapse due to an inability to reach the ideal, or we project a kind of utopian end to the story. This is highly Aquarian. The reason that it's Aquarian is not so much because Aquarius itself is concerned with a vision of time that's linear and progressive and hierarchical toward some perfect endpoint or maybe the opposite, that in failing to reach the ideal, we have some kind of dystopian apocalypse. Either way, the reason is not so much because Aquarius is into that as much as it is that Aquarius can see the ideal, the archetypal, the perfect triangle in the mind of God. Projecting that forward in time, as we are bound to do, is very easy for us because that's how we experience time.

Even though that's not the fuller real story, we project it forward in time, and then we buy into the cult of history. The cult of history is like an imagined storyline where we are part of a collective, heroic journey towards some kind of perfect end, or if we can get there, or some kind of total disaster if we don't. And Aquarius perpetuates that kind of Messianic apocalyptic and times next best world, you know, you know, the future is Atlantis. It's like that. And the problem with this is that, from the standpoint of least the standpoint of ancient mystics, I've said this before, like, the sun's going to burn out someday, and this will, this human experience will end right, and that doesn't make it any better or worse than anything else in the universe that expresses itself shows itself and then disappears.

That is the material universe and its nature coming to be and passing away coming To be in passing away, and certainly, the underlying energy and life that has been the Earth and human history will continue in new forms in different ways in different places. But we make the mistake of placing way too much significance on human beings, humanity, history, and some kind of collective story through the sign of Aquarius.

We project the archetypal potential for perfection onto the human story and into the human future, and the easiest way that you can see this in everyday life is any kind any group of people that is telling you if you're not on board with this particular story, or these particular ideas about human life, human significance, why we're here, what we're doing this big collective story that's unfolding, the importance of it, how intensely you ought to be invested in, etcetera. That sense of you better be a part of this particular collective journey toward an end goal or desired end state is thoroughly religious.

Like that's a huge part of the history of religion, the human potential, the New Age Movement picks up on many of those themes. There have been a number of really great books written on this by an astrological historian named Nicholas Campion, I highly recommend checking out his work. But anyway, that's it, it's like, no, you don't have to join that cult. And that is the sort of Plutonian cult of Aquarius. Get on board with this very particular story about human potential, collective relevance, why we're all here, and what we're all trying to create as some kind of ideal future.

There is a way, of course, of participating in the world and a collective unfolding that is deeply concerned with the development or cultivation of goodness and virtue and so forth, without projecting onto it a linear understanding without projecting a literal, perfect future that is captured or like wrapped up in an overly linear understanding of time. I would liken this to something like we know, given the knowledge of impermanence. I heard a Buddhist say this one time, and I thought it was really apt.

So rather than thinking that the title means we're on a journey on the Titanic, sailing toward a great final destination, we realize we're on the Titanic or the, you know, the end will come for everything. Even the Titanic, even the great story of human history, will end someday. We'll say it will sink. So how do you hold that? If you take that perspective, someone could say, well, there's no reason to care. It's like, well, that perspective justifies nihilism.

It's like, yeah, it certainly could. Could you ever see the movie Titanic? There were people who got pretty nihilistic and crazy. As they realize the ship is sinking, that movie comes to mind. Like, I think about those scenes where people are scrambling and harming each other and looting stuff, and you know, only in it for themselves. That is one way of dealing with the reality of impermanence that many people decide, consciously or unconsciously, to take. The other view, which is actually the truth, is that many of us keep on trying to do the best we can. And we're like the fiddle players who remember them in the Titanic movie; they continue to play music and make art until the end.

Or there are people who keep trying to help, do good, serve, and uphold beautiful ideals of human behavior and relationships even though the ship is sinking. That, to me, is closer to the way that ancient astrologers looked at the universe, that there are cycles of creation and destruction, and the human story is no exception, which does not mean giving up and becoming selfish and nihilistic. It means that you continue chopping wood and carrying water, playing your fiddles, making art, being virtuous, and helping other people, but you don't do so with the idea of this kind of illusion that everything is progressing in time towards some perfect utopian state. You look at reality and see how this reality, by its very nature, is not Olympus. It's not.

This is not the static realm of the triangle. This is the place where the triangles come to pass away, moving on a river. The lack of compromise is its blessing and its curse. Aquarius is uncompromising, often about what it believes to be good: Right, true, perfect, ideal, progressive, etcetera, but life in the material world and an embodied and embodied form is by its nature all about compromise. In fact, in many ancient religious traditions, the material universe was seen as an act of sacrifice. This world works and operates like the Lion King in the circle of life, right? You think of that song. Everything moves through a cycle of life. And that means that you will; the nature of being here is to compromise. And I don't want to put it too gross, but it's sort of like the Earth will eat you someday. You know, that's kind of the natural way of things. And as you are alive, you are eating the Earth.

The point is that this is how things are in the material universe, to the point where I remember ancient people constantly surrounded by sacred things with acts of sacrifice because they believed that it was a mirror of reality itself. Reality itself is like a churning cauldron of sacrifice. And the sacrifice is somehow inherent to the experience of being alive. And so death and life are like cooperatively churning and bubbling in a pot. And you respect that by offering sacrifice.

There may be no sign in the zodiac that is less willing to compromise than Aquarius. That is its blessing. No, I will hold to a high standard, you know. And if we didn't have that, we wouldn't have so many beautiful things like, you know, for example, I would say that musical theory is, in a sense, a very high standard. It was like the table of elements or the language of astrology; there are things that we experience, approach, and go to that are close to perfection. A musical scale is close to perfection. The planetary archetypes are close to perfection when I study them when I think about them, when I play an instrument, and when I do astrology, I feel close to the triangle in the mind of God. And so, in a sense, that triangle is uncompromising, right? It doesn't blend, change, or shift. It doesn't lack or deteriorate; it is just unyieldingly perfect. When we bring that standard into our lives in any arena, whether we're studying something or we're trying to learn and grow spiritually, or cultivate virtue, or become a better parent, or whatever it is that lack of compromise, that is so special about the sign of Aquarius. And, of course, the lack of compromise is also the problem. Because life material life is this churning cauldron of sacrifice, where the only way you can actually experience happiness here is if you keep approaching and approximating the highest truth while constantly forgiving, forgiving, surrendering, and allowing for imperfection.

Something about imperfection, mortality, death, and falling short of ideals is exactly what allows human beings to be in life, reaching for love with the eternal and right; they experience that tension; it needs some separation between perfect and imperfect, between the ideal and the falling short of it. So, the only way we can really be in this world is to have a relationship that, on some level, is all about compromise. Aquarius is a very uncompromising sign.

So, we always have to be aware that the uncompromising part of life is beautiful. We need it. But it can also drive us mad, dissociate us, alienate us, and keep us from one another. Keep us on a high horse, keep us self-righteous, keep us in the courts of, you know, like public opinion and judging everything according to like impossible standards of virtue that most of us don't even live up to, and yet we hold others to et cetera, et cetera.

So, the final thing I want to say about Aquarius is that it's all about moving toward an ideal, as that ideal will always move away from us. That doesn't mean you don't keep walking toward it. That would be the nihilism on the Titanic. You keep walking toward an ideal, yet you know that the nature of the ideal is to part and separate from you. You reach for it, but not madly; you yearn for it but not through the lens of judgment. Criticism, you move toward an ideal with surrender, forgiveness, and compromise.

So, okay, well anyway, I hope that was interesting. These are just some thoughts on Aquarius that have been on my mind as Pluto is finishing up its second little initial entrance. And I would love to hear your insights and thoughts. What are you coming up with? What do you see? And yeah, well, I'm sure we'll visit this again sometime. All right, take it easy, everyone. Bye.