What does Pluto feel like in Aquarius? An acid trip, a break-you-down-to-build-you-up health spa or boot camp, disintegration of the Higher Mind, a tunnel lined with swirly colors, the Grim Reaper in tie-dye, seeing life through a ‘now or never’ lens, Understanding delivered through destruction or transformation, the Intellect exploring the depths of existence (and so perhaps traumatized though somewhat removed from direct experience of those depths), a crowd going dangerously wild, a group experience that helps you discover the ‘true’ individual role or even the emergence of a leader, and there’s always the possibility that, especially early in the transit, we get the destructive side of things without immediately seeing the restoration or rebuilding, as in the context of revolution or rebellion.

In Aquarius Pluto attunes the mind to Plutonian energies. It’s a little like that saying, ‘If you’ve got a hammer, everything looks like a nail’, but in this case it may be ‘When you find one thing that needs to be eliminated, you may start to think everything has to go!’ Extremes are always a danger with Pluto, but especially so when the god of the Underworld moves through Air, as that changes thinking. We saw massive changes around relationships when Pluto was in Libra (1971-1984), when the critique developed under Virgo led to the destruction of old stigmas around relationships (such as assumptions around divorce or single parenthood), with the proof found in a soaring divorce rate, single parents by choice, couples living together rather than tie the knot, and a worshiping Wall Street mentality that for some substituted one Libra subject, Money, for another, Love.

Pluto in Aquarius brings a disintegrative quality to academic forms of knowledge; the conclusions we’ve drawn from study, experimentation, and observing via the scientific method somehow evolve or don’t hold. With Pluto in the very last degrees of Capricorn we’ve seen Artificial Intelligence surge to the foreground, applied in ways we didn’t anticipate, that cause fear or misunderstanding, and that threaten, at least in the minds of some, to extinguish human thought and creativity as irrelevant. Never fear; we’re only seeing exploration of extremes, a backlash to the perception of intellectual (and other) limits that was a constant theme with Pluto in Cap.

What practical effects might we see? Ones where change is instituted most effectively by group effort–we may learn the importance of banding together, and of choosing the most appropriate leader in any situation. We might also see a more pervasive appreciation of the sciences and simultaneously revolutionary changes in both our assumptions about what makes up the Universe and in effective application of what is known and proven. Changes to our ability to understand everything in our lives, both individually and Collectively, are on the agenda, and we’re guaranteed to emerge into Pluto in Pisces with a much less restrictive view of our Universe, an understanding that truly opens the creative imagination. We may also come to understand that change itself doesn’t require a revolution; it can happen at the quantum level, with our perceptions of the energy expenditure to make things different becoming much less literal hands-on, and much more propelled by the energy of intent.

We may come to anticipate Death as an adventure, an exploration of what consciousness can perceive and experience, rather than seeing it as the end of physical existence, and there may be a kind of perceptual melding of the Mind and Soul, so that we confuse and/ or venerate the two as one. This offers us an alternative to the idea that Pluto carries of finality, of endings that are irreversible, to the finiteness of all things, and may make us exquisitely sensitive to (and perhaps much more accepting of) the way change is the one constant, to be welcomed rather than mourned.

And we may form an entirely new, ‘modern’ concept of what Power truly is. That can only be a good thing, as we come to see that it’s not about controlling others or exerting our Will, but rather lives in the constancy and force inherent to Love, to Intention, and to an exercise of Will that sees it act as flowing water, soaking in where welcome, respectfully accommodating the immovable stones and blending seamlessly into already extant rivers. In that way our idea of Power becomes respectful of others, a cooperative one; never before has ‘Go with the flow’ had more, and more accurate, meaning, in terms of expressing ourselves and getting what we want, while still honoring others and what is.

Pluto is the agent of change that, in Aquarius, requires we embrace what’s modern and ‘new’–get ready, we’ll have plenty of chance to practice. This transit amounts to experiences that form a very personal and very specific lens through which to view the Universe, ones that may initially confuse, disorient, or completely take us outside what we know–and yet it will all be shaped by our own unique experiences– so try to enjoy!