The Sun Conjunct Pluto in Aquarius: Pluto’s First Chance to Speak Clearly

Hey everyone. This is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology (https://nightlightastrology.com/). Today we're going to take a look at the sun conjoining Pluto in the sign of Aquarius. This transit began yesterday and is peaking today. So we're going to take a look at five things that you can watch for when the sun conjoins Pluto.

But I'm also going to talk about this in terms of one of the first opportunities that Pluto has now, sort of permanently in the sign of Aquarius, with no more retrogrades back into Capricorn, to speak on behalf of its agenda in a new place of our life, in a new phase of life. So we're going to look at it from that standpoint and add a little bit of a twist in how we're thinking about this today. I think this will be a good way of approaching it.

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Okay, so let's turn over to the real-time clock, and here we go. Now we have—let me pull up. Where's my epic pen? Okay, here we go. So you can see today that we have the conjunction of the sun and Pluto. Now, I have this taking place this morning, January 21, central time at like, you know, 8 a.m. or something like that. So we'll have been feeling this yesterday into today. The sun ingresses into Aquarius, and right away it's getting into the conjunction with Pluto.

Now, if we give this just a couple of days to play out, I'd say three days. That takes us to January 24, Friday. So you could think of this as a transit that starts the week off and that runs really from the 20th through the 24th in terms of a window in which we may really notice or feel the Plutonian effects. So what to watch for—that is the question of the day.

I want to talk about this first of all, from the standpoint of the fact that Pluto has just recently ingressed at the late part of 2024 into Aquarius to stay now for about two decades. So with that ingress, no more retrogrades back into the sign of Capricorn. It's definitely a little different. The first couple of ingresses are like, you know, dipping your toes—Pluto sort of dipping its toes in the waters, the airy waters of Aquarius, and then backing out and going back into Capricorn.

And so when an outer planet finally transitions into a sign to stay, there's a sense that now the work has commenced. Now the focus on a new area of life, a new sort of era of our life with an outer planet in a new house, has begun. Now, I say new house because in ancient astrology, in ancient Western and Eastern astrology, whole sign houses are the basic form of house division. And so when a planet changes signs, it changes houses.

So from the paradigm, from the whole sign house paradigm, that means that ingresses are a big deal. We pay close attention to them on this channel. Obviously, for your horoscopes, it'll change signs. So even if you're not a whole sign devotee, if you listen to horoscopes, you certainly are in that format. So they can make a big impact with your horoscopes, if nothing else.

Now, what's really interesting is that some of the earliest and most significant transits to Pluto in Aquarius will therefore give an opportunity for Pluto in Aquarius to sort of make its intentions clear. I say this as someone as an astrologer who has watched ingresses—Uranus into Aries and Uranus into Taurus, for example, little faster-moving outer planets like Uranus or Saturn or Jupiter—and when they change signs, some of the earliest, biggest aspects to that planet in a new sign will often give an opportunity for us to really understand the direction that that planet is taking us in.

Sometimes it's subtle, sometimes it's about those things that are shifting inside of us, and sometimes it's very clear that, you know, something—the direction or tone or mood of something in some particular area of our life—is changing directions. But either way, it becomes an important moment to track and pay attention to. I highly recommend anyone taking astrology seriously and not just constantly listening to horoscopes for something like a celestial gossip column report.

If you're really serious about tracking astrology in your life, it's like having a dream journal. You need some way, if you're going to work with your dreams, of being in the practice of noticing and observing the parallels between the symbolism and the events, both inner and outer. So this is a great time to start a journal practice if you don't have one yet, because we've got a good opportunity this week to start tracking meaningful transits.

And on my channel, you'll find that I'll often tell you exactly when to track out something, and I'll offer you historical timelines and so forth. So you'll certainly have some support here if you decide to do so. But regardless, I recommend tracking this moment.

Now, there are five things that I would watch for, and these are kind of my ideas about how Pluto might offer us its first clear voicings in Aquarius. Now that it's there to stay, being a little bit different than the previous ingresses, we can start to say, "Okay, now I'm becoming aware of a focus." We have Pluto, you know, at the first degree of Aquarius, a very early movement through the first bound of Aquarius, the first decan of Aquarius, the first permanent placement. Now I'm here to stay.

So what I have in this list is archetypal things that would fit any sun-Pluto conjunction, but they're a little bit specific to what Pluto might be saying for the first time right now, or offering us some first insights, as it's now in Aquarius to stay. So again, let's go to number one.

This is Pluto's first clear voicing. So what do I mean by that? Well, the sun is a planet that naturally is associated with things like intelligence, illumination, enlightenment, and understanding. The sun was the planet that was associated with the ninth house, for example. It was said to rejoice in the ninth house in ancient astrology—a place that is associated with teachers, enlightenment, illumination, wisdom, philosophy, and the process of enlightenment as we study universal Dharma.

Both Eastern and Western ancient astrologers talk about the ninth house this way. And so one way of thinking about what the sun does when it contacts Pluto—because Pluto is a planet that works in the shade, in the realm of that which is invisible or unconscious or subterranean, or it works in realms that are deep and mysterious and somewhat unseen. Think, for example, the fact that Pluto and the underworld have a long-time association, and it, like a planet like Mercury, who can go into the realm of invisibility.

And there are things like invisible cloaks that are associated with Pluto, right? So the contact with the underworld is one of the reasons that Pluto is a great process-oriented planet, because when things are being moved from a subterranean or underworld space, it's about things that are hidden gradually becoming revealed, or unconscious material gradually becoming conscious.

And the unconscious, by the way, often gets associated with evil and darkness, which is unfortunate, because only some things that are in the unconscious are, you know, like dark or demonic or something like that—that's not all. The unconscious should not be thought of as, you know, synonymous with evil, right? So that's problematic. First of all, that Pluto gets that reputation, although it's not wrong to say that some of what's in the unconscious might be evil or dark or, um, sort of like problematic in some way.

But anyway, the point being that when the sun comes into contact with that subterranean space, one of the things it can do in any sun-Pluto conjunction is to suddenly offer an illumination of that which is unconscious, hidden, or subterranean. Somehow. It's as though we have a flashlight, and we're able to see at least a small portion of what has existed in some unconscious way.

This, when Pluto has just ingressed into Aquarius, can therefore be a moment where Pluto sort of says, "This is what I'm doing. This is the direction I'm heading in." Oh, I have a clear moment of understanding what this evolutionary process is starting to do or where it's heading. It's not that we can see all of a 20-year arc that's in front of us right now, but at the very least, we might get a sense of what path Pluto is on, what path Pluto is walking down, or some of the contents of the unconscious space that Pluto is starting to work in or through.

So think about the sun conjoining Pluto right now as an opportunity for us to start seeing a little bit of that invisible or darker territory that Pluto is bringing to light, and then simply apply that to the whole sign house in which Pluto in Aquarius is working into right now in your chart. Now, I said earlier yesterday, I said for the fixed signs, this is a cardinal or an angular house in your chart, which makes that particularly potent.

And I went through those in the video yesterday at the very end of the video, if you want to look back on the little house reminders I gave for the fixed signs, because those signs—rising signs in particular—are going to be having Pluto in an angular house. It's a little louder in those spaces, but everybody's got Pluto somewhere. You can go back into any of the horoscopes that we did, particularly the horoscope for November, and you can take a look at the way that we talked about Pluto ingressing into a new house to stay.

So if you go back to my archives, there are at least five or six videos in which we've done breakdowns of Pluto—Pluto's horoscope in the new house in your chart, if you want a little extra backing in that sense. So Pluto's first clarity. Number two would be fertile—fertile post-removal. Oh my gosh. Okay, so Pluto's first removal.

Pluto is a planet that is associated with purgation, so removal is maybe not even the best word. When you think about Pluto, one of the things that happens is things that are held within or trapped might erupt, or things that are toxic might be purged or removed, or things that are unseen may suddenly be revealed. So when I was talking about Pluto's first clarity, in a sense, removing some element of unconsciousness and making it conscious would also be like a removal.

But this is a slightly different way of thinking about it, because what the sun and Pluto can do together when they come into a conjunction is it's like an antibiotic. The sun-Pluto acts like a purgative and will remove things that are toxic or corrupt or stagnant and suddenly bring it into the light. They say the best antibiotic is sunshine. You guys ever heard that before? So, you know, bringing things that are dark to light and removing things that are toxic, stagnant, malignant—that is a sun-Pluto dynamic.

For example, sun-Pluto transiting the sun in many natal charts—over my years of counseling, I have seen in relation to the beginning of chemotherapy, the removal of a tumor, or even the removal of something, an organ that is sick, you know, like not sick. But what am I—like having your appendix removed or something? I've seen that with Pluto and the sun—that had that happened to a family member not long ago.

So point being, one of the ways that Pluto starts its work is to start by removing something. So watch for the potential for something to be removed or purged. You might even think about it that way. But, you know, the word purge—I think about it in the context of, like, an Ayahuasca ceremony. Some people, the word purge, they're associating it with, like, I don't know, something really, like—was that movie *The Purge*, you know, where everyone's killing each other? I don't know. People have maybe some negative associations with that word. So use whatever word works for you.

Number three, Pluto's first motivation. The Pluto dynamic is incredible for any kind of Pluto transit. It's very powerful when it comes to things like fertility and the quality of regeneration, where something has felt dead. Suddenly it's filled with life again. Suddenly it's filled with a sense of meaning and purpose again. So Pluto's first motivation in a new sign and house—it's not like it hasn't already begun with the few little ingresses we've already had. I don't mean to oversimplify, but boy, a sun-Pluto conjunction right now, that Pluto is here to stay, might give us some clues about the different direction or purpose that is starting to clarify itself, and that is gaining some fertile—some sort of fertile regenerative power.

I say both fertile and regenerative because sometimes it's something that's dead that's coming back to life, and other times it's suddenly just an energy of empowerment, like, "Oh, there's fertile soil, and I can plant something here, and I'm really aware of it." And Pluto will certainly just make things vital and empowered. The word Pluto means riches, and one of the—and, of course, the Greek counterpart is Hades. But the idea that right now with the sun, who has as a symbol much to do with motivation, purpose, life, direction, ambition, could come in with Pluto and say, "Let's clarify a sense of direction or purpose, or motivation, or intentionality."

We may notice some of that coming through now. Is it the world's biggest transit? No, but when it comes to tracking the meaningful ingress of an outer planet into a new house and a new space in your life, this is a good moment to pay attention, because even the littlest inklings are falling on rich soil. So, you know, we don't always notice how small it is that we start thinking about something, start wishing for something, start imagining something. It falls on fertile ground. You'll find that six months, a year out, "Now I'm working on that thing. Now that thing has started to grow." That's why I say pay attention.

All right. Number four, Pluto's first complication. Now, here's the thing: Pluto also tends to expose unconscious dynamics, power struggles, you know, conflicts of ego or different wills that are involved in a situation. And so, you know, when Pluto is in a new house, it's also going to bring up things for us that are probably more complicated, and that there's shadow material that we may not have been aware of.

So I say Pluto's first complication because one thing that the sun can do with Pluto is sort of illuminate. You know, "This is deeper and more complicated than I thought." Or, "There are motivations that I wasn't aware of," or, "There are power dynamics or shadows at play in a situation or part of myself or an environment or a relationship that I wasn't completely aware of previously." So even just becoming more aware of those things, it starts to change the landscape of a specific area of our life or our unfolding as a person. So watch for that.

And then five would be Pluto's first judgment. One of the features of Hades and the underworld in the, you know, sort of ancient Hellenistic imagination, is that when the soul passes out of its body, it goes through a trans-migratory process where its karma, its actions, and the results of its actions are weighed. And you see this in various traditions, right? It's not—I mean, you have something like the Bardos in Buddhism, you have the Egyptian Hall of Ma'at where the heart is weighed against the feather. There are so many versions of this, right?

But the idea is that there's a process of purification that takes place, and something like a judgment of the soul and its actions. I don't think of this personally as a punitive thing, but as a careful kind of evaluation of the heart and soul of each of us that happens as we act and grow and learn. I think there's a lot of grace in the universe. So when I say judgment, I don't—I really don't think of it as something punitive, but I do think of, you know, results are measured in a way that evades our understanding a lot of the time.

You know, we—you get insights sometimes into your actions and the results of your actions that are not as simple as A causes B causes C, right? It's more like an entire web of circumstances, and you start to see how certain mistakes were, in weird ways, like the best thing that could have happened. I mean, it's complicated, right? So my point is not to be overly simplistic, that Pluto is going to deliver some kind of, you know, hip check to throw you into the boards of life or something, but Pluto will offer you feedback in the form of outcomes and results, and tangible feedback about the way you've been doing things, or about the way that things have been unfolding.

And it will be clear. It's like, "Oh, I see. I can see that the planets are offering feedback in the way that consequences are happening in my life." And sometimes I can see the consequences and feel the weight of karmic judgment, but I don't really understand it. Either way, the point is that you may notice that Pluto is sort of delivering results and bringing about a karmic series of outcomes or results—results that, you know, we have to stand back and go, "Wow. Okay, so now I see there are cosmic forces at work in a particular area of my life, and if I pay attention, I might be able to learn from it."

Then even if I can't understand it, because there certainly the sun will lend some clarity to those deeper, you know, karmic judgments that are unfolding, and the way results are happening can be illuminated for us. But also, you know, some of it may remain mysterious, and so there's also an opportunity to simply trust and say, "Okay, I don't really understand why things are happening, and it feels a little intense, or it might even feel a little harsh and severe." That's the sun-Pluto dynamic, for sure.

But I'm going to have faith and trust, stay humble, stay curious, stay accepting, stay in gratitude, and see how things play out. And then often what happens is, coming off from an experience like this in a short time—a couple of weeks, a couple of months—if there's been something big, like a kind of big—it feels like the cosmic judge thumped the hammer, the gavel down—you will often come to a place of understanding in time, because you yourself didn't react. You just stayed open and accepting.

And even if sun-Pluto dynamics sometimes come across as like the cosmic judge and jury delivered a harsh result, that there's a way in which, if we trust the process of what the cosmos is doing, in time, we usually come into a greater and deeper sense of wisdom. And sometimes that's nothing more than an appreciation for the mystery of it that we cultivate by not reacting when things become a little dramatic.

Anyway, I don't know—but see, but just notice that, like, sun-Pluto—like, one of the things that I've noticed over, like, if Pluto is transiting someone's sun on their birth chart, you will often see dramatic karmic outcomes that are—and sometimes they're really powerfully good too, like very empowering. But in the same way, you'll go, "Wow, that was a very powerful result that just came. I didn't necessarily see that coming. It's not like I felt like X led to Y, which then led to Z—this huge, you know, result that was really good. I can't—I'm not sure how I got this good result," or, "That was really heavy and intense, and I'm not sure exactly how or why that happened."

So there's this kind of eruption of unconscious material that sometimes feels disproportionate to anything we can name as a cause. That's what I'm trying to get at, and that's why I say Pluto's first judgment. So big moments like that happen with sun-Pluto dynamics. Anyway, a little bonus would be just always pay attention when the sun and Pluto are conjoined to the karma of leaders, fathers, or anyone that constitutes a symbolically solar figure. Sometimes that will come up pretty dramatically around these transits.

That is it for today. That's what I've got. Remember again, like and subscribe if you haven't yet. We're seeing how we can build the community here this year and have set some goals for ourselves. So we appreciate all of you who have already subscribed. It's free to do so, and it really does help us grow. Hope you're having a great day. We'll be back again for more tomorrow. Bye-bye.