Pluto Enters Crazy Town
'Adjustment' pointers for the dwarf planet's 20-year transit through Aquarius
“What fresh hell is this?” —Dorothy Parker
AQUARIUS. Quick! Does anyone have a flip, off-the-tip-of-their-tongue description of the sign? You know, like when someone tells you they’re a Gemini, and you think: “Trickster.” Or a Leo and you go: “Ego.” Or Scorpio, and you go: “Oh, a Scorpi-oooooh!”
When someone tells me they’re an Aquarian, the first switch that’s thrown in my brain is, “Crazy.”
Of course, I would never announce this to their face, but within the stereotypical (in which the astrological world continually—despite efforts not to—spins), crazy is just, well, so—sanely speaking—perfect for Aquarius.
Everything about Aquarius is odd, oblique, and obstinately outrageous—but never ostensibly. (A sentence like the previous one is very Aquarian.) Every oppositional defiant (a term for a particular psychological complex) person I’ve ever met has been an Aquarian.
It’s Aquarius’ job to be, you know, that way. How else does anything revolutionary enter the ho-hum flow of time?
Traditional astrologers assign Saturn, the most conservative and tenacious of the planets, as the sign’s ruler. But modern astrologers assign Uranus, the most wild-card and unhinged planet—as the sign’s ruler. But then, viewed chrono-mytho-logically, Uranus is Saturn’s dad, but Saturn is the ancient ruler while Uranus is—so—what gives?
Actually, both planets associated with Aquarius are fitting. Saturn (preservation of the status quo) and Uranus (liberation from the tried and true) are in a uroboric dance with each other.
Novice astrologers usually consider Aquarius as belonging to the water triad of elements. But, no, Aquarius, despite its water-bearing emblem, is an air sign. But as an everywhere-all-over-the-place element, Aquarian air belongs to the fixed category of astrological qualities—Oy—more mishegas.
One of my favorite descriptions I ever read about Aquarius came from, I think it was Liz Greene, and I’m paraphrasing when she said: “Aquarians love humanity—but they can’t stand people.”
Groups, communities, clubs, communes, cults—bring them on. But the particulars of particular people with their human foibles often disappoint the Aquarian dream of what a civil, rational person is about. The ideal of brother and sisterhood moves Aquarius deeply, but one-on-one relationships (that involve the messy realm of irrational feelings) can confound them.
See, we’re already into Crazy Town.
This is what I love about Aquarius, and I willingly allow them to take me there.
As Aquarius rules my seventh house of relationships, I’m always pulled by the nose whenever I become romantically involved with one. It doesn’t help that they’re so damned handsome, either!
The Aquarian experience, marked as it is by Saturn and Uranus, is like striking (Uranus) a piñata (Saturn) and wondering what will tumble out and land at your feet.
And where would we be without Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt’s Aquarian vision? Masterful ways of guiding us through the darkest, most broken-down periods in US history.
So what might it portend when Pluto, that little hell-nugget that occupies the far edge of the solar system—and moves like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride in its orbit around the Sun—progresses into Aquarius for a 20-year transit?
Well, that’s what I’ll write about today in a more detailed take apart.
Something to be aware of with Pluto. When the planet (the slowest moving in our solar system) enters a new sign in the Zodiacal circle, there follows an eruption of the old or spent versions of the sign’s influence that have played themselves out amidst Pluto’s 249-year passage through the Zodiac.
Think of it as a last hurrah. This resistance relates more to human nature than it does to the impersonal forces represented by the organic function of the planets and the signs. The signs and planets don’t moralize. They just ‘do.’
Humans are adverse to change, especially when modifications cut the core deep. And Pluto’s form of regeneration is of the irrevocable sort. Death is never a negotiation; there’s not much to talk about or equivocate. Everything that’s removed is to clear the decks for ‘what’s next’ within the circle of life.