the descent into heaven

Many people interested in astrology will be aware of the idea of the “procession of the equinoxes”, whereby we move from one astrological age to another. Famously we are meant to be on the brink of the Age of Aquarius, having passed through the Age of Pisces (more or less).

It’s always a matter of debate and conjecture as to when an Age actually starts, as we are talking about the slow shifting of the band of astrological signs (as measured from 0° Aries placed at the equinox) against the backdrop of actual stars. Nevertheless, each age lasts 2,160 years if they are taken to be of equal length (though there are other ways of dividing up the full cycle of 25,860 years).

Pluto dips into and out of Aquarius during 2023 and 2024, going in for the long haul at the very end of ’24. It stays there until 2043 – 44. 20 years of Pluto, doing what it does, in Aquarius. I think that is an opportunity (let’s be charitable), and may prove significant.

The touch of Pluto often seems dreadful to people, catastrophic, pitiless, At the end of the day though, it always clears the way, demolishes blocks, destroys that which does not serve the life force and the evolution of consciousness. Being a natural phenomenon, it is of course completely ruthless and indiscriminate, and has no preference on how we get there.

Pluto’s speedy passage through its own sign of Scorpio was educational. Probably its most characteristic face for many of us was the plague of AIDS. Throughout much of Pluto’s transit of Scorpio this brought death, fear, panic, paranoia, bigotry and demonization to the fore, as sex became a potentially fatal activity, and body fluids became something to fear as pathogenic contaminants. But as time progressed, something was ripped open, and in all its horror, a common humanity was revealed. As disease dragged sex and sexuality out of the shadows, the sheer weight of bodies broke the fearful divisions between people at a subliminal level. After AIDS, prejudice might persist, but in lessening numbers and virulence. The attitudes of the 70s and the 90s were in some way a world apart. Pluto left taking many lives with it, but it made us look at death and sex and the body and disease and suffering, and the paltry irrelevance of moral judgements.

There is no morality in Pluto.

In Aquarius we might wonder what we have in store with our Lord of Shades and Shadow. For that I think we have to look at what is deepest, most hidden, and taboo about Aquarius. This will show us what may need to be connected with, and brought into consciousness, and on the other hand, what blocks it, and will probably get intensified until we are purged of it collectively. Individually this can be creative and almost miraculous, depending on our capacity to brave the life force. But again, there is no morality to Pluto, and its action is not associated with comfort, ease or security. This you can’t get away from. Pluto is a dread power, but it happens to be the same one you have deep at your core.

Aquarius is a fixed sign, but it is very much concerned with circulation and communication. It is fixed because you need a stable system to connect things. Arteries, veins, roads, networks. The circulatory system is Aquarius, just as the heart is Leo. It is fixed air, because it is concerned with information and intelligent energy. Though it is fixed, it is fixed in order to bring about movement, and moreover free movement. Circulation, communication, holism.

We are used to the conventional ideas of Aquarius. Technology, social networks, groups, ideologies, mass communication. These are the obvious, material aspects of Aquarius, but let’s look deeper.

Aquarius has a quite breathtaking subtlety to it, but it needs an open mind to start to see the possibilities.

When we take the basic principle of structure and networks and conduits that allow free communication, and the realisation of a different level of individuality and holism, and we then apply that the truly Aquarian field of the subtle, we go quite beyond the clichés. Then we start to see communication across worlds, beyond the material, and beyond Earth. We see communication across life times and incarnations, and between parallel universes and selves. Telepathy and synchronicity. Communication across species. And in the middle of it all, the individual, realising their deeper being, in the great network of consciousness. Not absorbed into a “God” or a “One”, but self-realising in company, in relationship.

What of the blocks on Aquarius? Well I think we will find that lies in convention, control, regulation, politics, collectivism. I think with Pluto going through Aquarius, these things will become inflamed, desperate, impotent to the point where the Aquarian impulse can no longer be shackled to them, and will have to turn towards the subtle, the individual, and materialistically taboo, and the evolution of consciousness*. We have been prepared for this by Uranus square Pluto, which of course involves some of the same themes, as Uranus-Pluto will have some of the same energies as Pluto-Aquarius. This of course isn’t a pretty picture in mass terms, but Pluto doesn’t really do pretty. It just serves the life force and the evolution of consciousness.

But just as Pluto going through Scorpio brought change that seemed almost the opposite of its modus operandi, and accompanied great as well as painful things, so Pluto going through Aquarius may be preparation for a descent into an unexpected heaven.

The Age of Aquarius might not be tomorrow, but something in the world might start to get rewired for it in the not too distant future.

“Blithe Spirit” by Noel Coward, performed at Wem, October 1948 By Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru / The National Library of Wales from Wales/Cymru [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons

*Evolution of consciousness is however secondary to the energy transaction which is the bottom line. The route we take is up to us as individuals. We can indeed chose life, to the best of our ability.