I recently have enjoyed a few videos on generational astrology, which along with mundane astrology is one of the areas that I do find engaging. Larger scale trends are always an interesting source of potential data, and they also manage to get away from some of the self obsession of focusing on personality. We all love to know about ourselves, but that doesn’t tell us about the world. Generational astrology is a bit of a bridge, as we find it relatable in terms of personal meaning, while its context is clearly a much longer story.
A number of things came home to me here. One is the role of Pluto’s eccentricity in the pattern of generations. Neptune, which has a far more circular orbit, spends about 14 years in each sign, making it a handy “generational planet”, and quite appropriate for something as elusive, glamour ridden and potentially illusory as a generation’s sense of itself (if it indeed has much of one). Its collective emotion and its subconscious currents are however something you would expect to emerge in a cohort of natives. Pluto can though take anything from 12 to 31 years to traverse a sign. Such a transpersonal planet must indeed influence our broad generations, albeit these are not always biological generations. People waiting till their 30s to have kids is a relatively modern phenomenon, while on the other hand 12 has always been excessively young. Pluto is talking about something else.
Self-conscious generations
It is interesting though, that the generations that have spent so much time talking about themselves (and each other) have been those where the Pluto sign period falls the nearest to the Neptune generation marker. You can see it from the Pluto in Leo group (18 years there), through Virgo (16 years) and Libra (13 years) and on to Scorpio (12 years, the shortest in the zodiac). This covers the whole “Boomer to Millenial” span. After this it starts to spread out again, with Gen Z’s Pluto just a little longer in Sagittarius. I would think that those born from next year would really start to cleave in a different direction at some profound level, nearer to the patterns of my parents and grandparents, whose sense of themselves seemed to be far more decided for them by the life they faced.
What the relative congruence of Neptune and Pluto sign periods led to was a near synchronization of sign changes, with Neptune and Pluto sextile each other. This isn’t always going to be so. In recent decades in went like this.
Neptune-Libra Pluto-Leo 1942 – 1956 = 14 years
Neptune-Scorpio Pluto-Virgo 1956 – 1970 = 14 years
Neptune-Sagittarius Pluto-Libra 1971 – 1984 = 13 years
Neptune-Capricorn Pluto-Scorpio 1984 – 1995 = 11 years
Neptune-Aquarius Pluto-Sagittarius 1998 – 2008 = 10 years
Neptune-Pisces Pluto-Capricorn 2011 – 2024 = 13 years
Notice how towards the end there we are getting some gaps. The congruence will start to unravel over time. These dates are a bit rough, I’ve taken them from google searches, not gone through the details of ephemerides, with their initial and terminal dippings in and out of adjacent signs, but you can get the picture from this. But notice as well how regular and congruent are the Neptune-Pluto “generations” that we generally think of as “Baby Boomers” (not an accurate description for all populations on the Earth at the time) and “Gen X”. Note also here that astrologically the description of Boomer and Gen X effectively erases the Scorpio-Virgo generation. You’d think that this generation, being right in the middle of the “maximum congruence” set would have a really clear sense of itself, yet it is largely unrepresented in social consciousness.
Generation W
This is actually the generation that I was born into, and if I was to be unashamedly subjective about it, I’d say this generation was not the most publicly oriented, and did not have the most definite sense of itself. While being quite numerous, and growing up in the Libra-Leo formed environment, it just wasn’t the same, and was as if camping in the aftermath of the party. More like Gen X for sure, but formed in the shadow of the Boomers and their glamour. Scorpio-Virgo does not have a leading, extroverted vibe, and responds to crisis with withdrawal and a search for healing, while its ideals are more concerned with mystery and depth than altruism. The forms that it grew up with from the previous astrological generation do not work for it. It has a downbeat vibe, “fails” comfortably, succeeds privately, acts like a conduit, digesting, distilling, passing on its cargo unawares and unobtrusively. It’s ok for Scorpio-Virgo to not be publicly acknowledged, because it knows that is how life actually works. The things that it registered and focused upon will get expressed by others more dramatically. It simply paid attention to the processes that tended the cauldron.
Overlap, formation and expression
Another thing I saw expressed well recently was the way that astrological patterns are born into a generation, which grows up under the influence of the actors of the previous astrological generation, while it itself then supplies the outward actors for the following generation, at the same time meeting the astrological influences in the outside world which that later generation embodies inwardly. This of course gets more nuanced where you have things like a 30 year Pluto period covering two Neptune generations, and where the changes of sign are quite out of sync for the two planets.
If we take a generation astrologically to be about 14 years or so (Neptune wise), we can see that if you are born at the start of your generation then you get a good period of living under the astrological influence that you embody. If you are born at the end then you live under the next set of influences early, but you have more elder siblings of your cohort to accompany you. So in the latter case, when you are a teenager they are approaching 30, and already making some kind of a mark on the world (though how much of a mark in part depends on the size of the generation demographically). In many respects a generation isn’t in its prime till about middle age though, so by then we are looking at a number of astrological generations coexisting in time either astrologically or biographically.
Yet another interesting thing I saw put forward was the sense that Pluto showed how a generation responded to life experience (maybe especially to crisis), while Neptune showed where that generation experienced a characteristic form of loss or falling apart. This was illustrated with things like the breakdown of marriage for the Neptune Libra generation, and the AIDS crisis for the Neptune Scorpio generation. Neptune Virgo would have been very affected by things like the spectre of the atomic bomb and the potential devastation of nature, while the Neptune Leo generation were primed to hit the privations of the depression and/or the unheaval of world war during their youth. Carefree fun and self-expression was not at a premium. It is certainly one way of looking at things.
Neptune Pluto transits
We can also look at when Neptune or Pluto by transit catches up with the other generational planet’s natal position. For everyone born in this century or the last, that means when Pluto transits their natal Neptune. In my case that was my mid twenties. When we see a conflict between the issues associated with the two natal planetary signs, this transit can indicate the age at which this starts to come to a head or manifest, sometimes triggering the loss associated with Neptune. In my case it neatly coincides with the arrival of the AIDS crisis, turmoil over unattainable depth sexual relationships, and difficult spiritual search. Integrity of body and soul (Virgo) suffering the demands of transformative desire (Scorpio). The Libra-Leo dilemma is sometimes illustrated by the demands of self-expression running up against the requirements of relationship, leading to the aforementioned breakup of marriages.
We could look at a Capricorn-Scorpio individual (a “millenial”), and the triggering transit occurs at 25 years old, following the same pattern.
On the other hand, someone born in 1904 into the Cancer-Gemini generation (how different does that combination sound? Nowhere near the sextile relationship between Neptune and Pluto that we are so used to) the triggering transit occurs around age 11. Quite a different picture.
Fascinating stuff. Here are some links:
Pluto Generations – From the Maxis to the Minis
The Pluto-Neptune Generations, 1939 to 2042. Part 1: Boomers to Gen X
Wolves and Roses 