Historical Transitions of Pluto from Capricorn to Aquarius

Copyright By Frankie Lynch, September 2021

In 2008, Pluto entered Capricorn and within a few months, Lehman Brothers collapsed. This initiated a cascade of firms going into financial distress. The U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve were mobilized to use monetary policy to get the crisis under control. Yet, this was unprecedented, and officials were looking to Goldman Sachs alums like Tim Geithner, Larry Summers, and Paul Volker, to tell us what to do. Unfortunately, they helped cause the crisis in the first place. What became clear in the ensuing revelations was that U.S. companies had been hollowing themselves out from the inside for many years. Between 2002 and 2012, 54% of all profits from the S&P 500 companies went to stock buy backs, which are used to artificially inflate share prices (Harvard Business Review). Not only did they spend most of their profits on buying back their own stock on the open market, but they also went deep into debt to do it, over-leveraging themselves for short-term gains.

(Below from Forbes.com)

American companies are disappearing at alarming rates as well. The average longevity of companies went from 61 years in 1958 to only 18 years in 2019 and researchers expect 75% of the companies listed on the S&P 500 will have disappeared by 2027, according to a study by McKinsey. Meanwhile, the Treasury and the Federal Reserve pumped trillions of dollars of liquidity into the market to prop up over-leveraged companies. The University of Missouri estimates that the Federal Reserve pumped $29 trillion into the market between 2008 and now.

(Below from EquitableGrowth.org)

What did American people get? Foreclosures and dispossession. $90 Billion dollars was transferred from the poorest half of Americans to the richest 1%. Homelessness and food insecurity skyrocketed. Record numbers of people needed unemployment or food assistance. Simultaneously, however, the same financial class that got us into the crisis were busy gorging themselves at the proverbial trough of government money, all while calling working class people “moochers” for receiving any supplemental assistance from the government themselves. Politicians, Wall St board members, and many media pundits blamed people for the situation they were complicit in. While poor and working people suffered distress and degradation, the British Tax Justice Network estimates that the rich had stashed approximately $32 trillion in tax havens worldwide.

(Below from NYtimes.com)

Working class Americans were demanding that congress do something to ease their suffering and the latter responded by passing the Dodd-Frank Act. This was supposed to establish a consumer protection agency to hold financial firms and other companies accountable for predatory practices. However, it never came to fruition. Why? Because Wall Street didn’t let it. The dominant hegemonic power in the world right now is finance capital. In the United States, your political influence is determined by your wealth. In fact, ownership networks are so concentrated now that 40% of all the value of transnational corporations is controlled by a mere 146 top players, according to James B. Glattfelder’s study, “Who Controls the World?” The study found that, rather than being some sort of top-down conspiracy, extreme power and wealth concentration are emergent properties of the system.

(Below from James B. Glattfelder's TED Talk, "Who Controls the World?")

We also saw a popular backlash to the financial mismanagement of America’s owning class in the Occupy movement. It drew attention to the fact that finance capital is the most powerful force in the world and that its malfeasance was becoming more and more destructive. It also pointed out how a small group of people wielded all the political influence and hence, “the 1%” became a household phrase. Regular people become more aware that their political, financial, and media classes, had not been representing their interests, evidenced by a study showing record numbers of Americans don’t trust the mainstream media. In fact, trust in media was lower in the U.S. in that any other developed country according to Axios in 2021.

But it wasn’t just finance capital who suddenly was in the proverbial spotlight. Its destructive effects or rather, the modes of dividing the laboring classes to maintain control, were also being exposed. I’m speaking of racial and sexual violence. Black Lives Matter formed in 2013 as a response to George Zimmerman’s not-guilty verdict in the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin. Violent protests and riots erupted in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, following the police killings of two young boys, Michael Brown in St. Louis and Eric Garner in New York. Pluto was square to Uranus and sextile to Mars as the riots began. Despite the formidable and very public backlash, police killings in the black community continued at alarming rates. Most recently, in 2020 white officer, Derek Chauvin murdered a black civilian, George Floyd. Floyd quickly became a symbol for police brutality and wide scale protests ensued as Saturn entered Aquarius, many of them resulting in violence and destruction of property. This is what it looks like when oppressed people have gradually reached their last rope.

(Below from Guardian.com)

Then, in 2017, sexual assault and abuse allegations directed at powerful Hollywood producer and Miramax co-founder, Harvey Weinstein, became public. In October of that year, during which Saturn made an exact square to Mars and Pluto to the sun, actress Alyssa Milano tweeted out, imploring anyone else who had been abused by Weinstein to reply to her post with #metoo. The hashtag was first used by sexual assault survivor, Tarana Burke, in 2006. Since then, it has exploded into a movement, exposing sexual predators. Kevin Spacey ultimately had his career ended, as did Louis C.K., Matt Lauer, Al Franken, and many others, but most recently, Governor Andrew Cuomo in 2021. Harvey Weinstein was convicted of rape in May, 2018 and victims of sexual assault of all genders began to come forward in greater numbers as others began to take us seriously. Survivors were sending a message to the world, saying enough is enough and the hashtag “times up” appeared in tandem with #metoo.

So, what does all this tell us? It appears Pluto transiting Capricorn correlates with the erosion of the hegemony of the dominant power in the world. You probably didn’t need the history refresher, but it helps us establish the context that finance capital has become the dominant power and that its power is waning, mostly due to its own hubris, as well as the reaction of oppressed people throughout the world. Pluto will enter Aquarius proper in 2024 after going retrograde back into Capricorn, but what can we expect? To answer this question and perhaps develop a plausible forecast for this aspect, the best thing to do is look back through history.

So, how and when did finance capital become the dominant power? Who was it before them? When did Pluto transit Capricorn and Aquarius last? These are complicated questions, and investigating them is impossible to do without examining as many of the transitions of Pluto from Capricorn to Aquarius as one can. They are all interdependent and exist as chain of events that eventually give rise to emergent ones. Through examining the historical transits of Pluto through Capricorn and transitioning to Aquarius in this long article, you will see how this transit frequently, if not always, correlates with the decline of the dominant world power and rise of a new ascendant power. Let’s start with the most recent Pluto transit through Capricorn before this one.

Pluto entered Capricorn last in 1762, right toward the end of the French Indian war with England and her colonies. The war was quite costly, and the British Crown argued that most of it was fought on behalf of the colonists and that they should pay their fair share. This marked the end of Salutary Neglect, or England’s long-standing habit of leaving the colonists alone. Now, the crown needed money and wanted to squeeze it out of the colonies. They levied a series of taxes against the colonists which resulted in the latter declaring their independence from England. The American Revolution formally began in April of 1775 with the Battle of Lexington and Concord. Neither the British nor the colonists understood this at the time, but what they were witnessing was the decline of monarchical power in the west. Due to many factors that we won’t enumerate here, the colonists were able to defeat the British, with the help of the Marquis de Lafayette and French soldiers. In fact, Pluto was entering Aquarius right around the time Lafayette landed in 1778. Little did he know that his own country would descend into one of the bloodiest revolutions in history within the next decade.

(Engraving by Amos Doolittle, 1775)

When I think of Pluto entering Aquarius, my mind always turns right to the French Revolution. It was very Aquarian. Every aspect of society was questioned. They even explored alternative calendar systems and ways of measuring time. Religion and the clergy were looked upon with distrust and disgust. The monarchs were executed as traitors to the people. Who does that? During the Reign of Terror of infamous Aquarius rising, Maximilian Robespierre, heads literally rolled! I propose that Pluto entering Aquarius almost always correlates with the dominant power being supplanted by an emerging one. Assuming this is correct, who were the waning and waxing powers here? It should be obvious that monarchies were waning and a certain other class was waxing. I’m speaking of the Bourgeoisie, the rising merchant class who would eventually become the dominant ruling class embodied in global finance capital. This merchant class acquired wealth rivalling many monarchies and in 1694, the British Crown granted a charter for the first ever central bank, The Bank of England, to a Scottish merchant named William Patterson in order to finance the 100 Years War.

(Below from Britannica.com)

This was the same class who led the American revolution. The founding “fathers” or “framers,” as we now call them, were all landed gentry and were very suspicious of democracy. Just before the charter of the Bank of England was issued, there was another historically unprecedented event. Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676-7 was a multi-racial militia of indentured servants and laborers gathered to overthrow the governor of Virginia. Curiously enough, Pluto was making an exact square to the sun as well as Uranus to Mars. The insurrection was put down and the landed gentry of the colonies passed new laws forbidding fraternization between “blacks” and “whites,” terms that were relatively new at the time, according to historian and researcher, Theodore W. Allen. Poor white indentured servants were also given additional rights and status to foment division and discourage future collaborative insurrections. The wealthy planters of the colonies also abandoned indentured servants as their main source of labor and the peculiar institution of black chattel slavery was born in the colonies. Black slaves would be the primary labor until the end of the American Civil War. Hence racism became a tool of control for potentially rebellious populations.

Women in the colonies too were relegated to inferior status. The industrious and God-fearing Puritans who colonized the north certainly viewed the role of women as subservient. They were expected to attend to domestic duties and not interfere in politics. Between 1692-3, while Uranus was making an exact square to Venus and Neptune a tight square to Mars, the Salem witch trials resulted in the murders of 14 women and 20 people in all. You can see the hard Martial-Neptunian energy in the rabid Puritan congregations, who were caught up in the frenzy and hysteria. The Puritans also considered women to be weaker and more vulnerable to the snares of the devil, like witchcraft and necromancy. Enlightenment Philosophers like John Locke in the 17th century used science and natural law to justify the inferiority of women and asserted it was the natural role of men to paternally care for the weaker sex. During the revolutionary war, many women were expected to follow their husbands from battle to battle and they would often be flung into the line of fire. Women were only taught to read the Bible, discouraged from writing, and were excluded from the political process.

Abigail Adams would famously tell her husband John Adams to “remember the ladies,” lest they get fed up and start a revolution of their own. It wasn’t only in the colonies that rampant sexism was the norm. Mainland Europe was much the same. German and English protestants often had the same view of women and Evangelism was on the rise on both sides of the Atlantic. George Whitefield was a firebrand evangelical preacher from England. He was quite conservative, denounced Catholicism, and lauded slavery. Whitefield’s religious ideology permeated politics in the American colonies and in Britain during the late 18th century and became righteous justification for the oppression of blacks and women.

Now, these historical conflicts seem to be coming to a climax as we watch, poised and apprehensive, Pluto moving closer and closer to Aquarius. The French Revolution was a riotous and violent affair, but by the end of it, the bourgeoisie or rising merchant/financial class had effectively destroyed the French monarchy. In fact, the power of the bourgeoisie started to supersede that of monarchies all over the globe as their own wealth began to dwarf that of whole countries. For example, in 1893, President Grover Cleveland petitioned infamous robber baron J.P. Morgan to bailout the U.S. federal government to the tune of $65 million. One wonders how much political influence came along with that investment. Ok, the bourgeoisie attained massive hegemonic power and supplanted the dominance of European monarchies, but who was the dominant power before the monarchies? I’m sure you can already guess, but I’m going to tell the story anyway.

(Below: "Liberty Leading the People," by Eugene Delacroix, 1830)

Pluto also entered Capricorn in in 1517, the same year a German priest named Martin Luther would nail a railing critique against the practice of the Catholic Church selling indulgences. Indulgences were just paid tickets to heaven. You could purchase them from the Church and, at the right price, you were “guaranteed” that St. Peter would buzz you through those pearly gates once your time came. Martin Luther recognized this as blasphemous and completely against Christ’s precepts. When he refused to renounce his writings, Luther was excommunicated and became an outlaw from the Holy Roman Empire. However, thanks to the printing press, which had been invented about 80 years earlier, Luther’s ideas spread far and wide like wildfire.

(Below: "Martin Luther," by Lucas Cranach, 1529)

The printing press also enabled Bibles to be printed en masse and in German, since many of the lower classes didn’t learn Latin. Luther advocated everyone reading the bible for themselves. This idea effectively removed the Church and the priesthood from its self-styled position of mediating between God and man. The idea that you could explore your relationship to deity on your own was quite novel. Despite the Church’s best and most abominable efforts, Protestantism and Lutheranism gained in popularity. This period, ushered in by Pluto in Capricorn, came to be known as the Reformation and it constituted the decline of the Catholic Church’s ruthless hegemony.

The real humiliation of the of Church though came just months before Pluto entered Aquarius in 1532. King Henry VIII, after a slew of sordid love affairs and antagonisms with the Church over his fondness of serial marriage, thumbed his nose the Pope by declaring himself the Supreme Head of the Church of England. This was Henry’s defiant response to a Papal Bull of Excommunication. His symbolic gesture showed that the Church had no power over King Henry and therefore the political stranglehold the Church once had on Europe was disintegrating. Hence, this shift of Pluto into Aquarius coincided with the decline of Church power and the dominance of monarchies.

Prior to that, Pluto went into Capricorn in December of 1269. Pope Gregory X ascended to the Papacy in 1271 and immediately called the Second Ecumenical Council of Lyons in 1272. On the docket was the potential reunion of the Western Roman Church with the Eastern Byzantine Church. This was a big deal. There were no more bitter rivals in the medieval world than the Eastern and Western Churches and you can trace the history of their rivalry through Pluto transits through Capricorn and Aquarius. Let’s take a look at this rotten never ending soap opera.

(Below: Pope Gregory X from Getty Images)

The source of the rivalry dates all the way back to another Pluto transit through Capricorn, in 287 CE. The Roman Empire had become to large to govern administratively, so Emperor Diocletian made the call in 285 to divide it into a tetrarchy, that is, two halves, East and West, each with a senior and junior emperor. Diocletian eventually retired; confident his system would last. However, as Pluto entered Aquarius in 306 CE, Diocletian watched aghast as his tetrarchy collapsed in rivalries and power grabs.

In the end, Constantine would dominate and temporarily reunite the empire under his rule, as Pluto reached 24° of Aquarius. In 324 he formally became Caesar and founded the strategic city of Constantinople, which would become the future capitol of the East and the focus of antagonism from the West. You may also recall that Constantine had an alleged divine revelation that led to Christianity becoming the state church of the Roman Empire. The four most important Christian churches in the Roman Empire were in Antioch, Alexandria, Rome, and the newly Christened, Constantinople.

(Below: Diocletian, from Britannica.com)

The Western Empire would fall to the surrounding Germanic tribes in 476 CE, who took on the language, customs, and religion of their newly conquered subjects. Pluto was applying to Saturn in a conjunction at the time. Meanwhile, the Byzantine East flourished and its capitol, Constantinople, became a bastion of classical culture and the arts. In the west, the Bishop of Rome, also known as the Pope, maintained cordial relations with the new Germanic overlords. By 550, however, Emperor Justinian I reconquered much of Italy, including Rome. Constantine had designated the Papacy to be the most powerful position in the Roman Christian world. However, for centuries, Popes were only chosen with the consent of the Byzantine Emperor and the Papacy respected that arrangement until several controversies surrounding church dogma sharpened the divide between East and West.

During the 7th century, though, Islamic invaders threatened the stability of “Christendom,” and conquered much of the area surrounding the Mediterranean. The Romans lost control of the churches in Alexandria and Antioch. This left Rome and Constantinople as the remaining two centers of Christianity and cemented their opposition. Sheer malice between the Eastern and Western Churches grew from various controversies, but two primary ones had to do with the Filioque, or the rearrangement of the order of procession of the holy trinity so that the Holy spirit proceeds from the father AND the son, whereas the Byzantine Church maintained that the Holy Spirit only proceeded from Father. The other major controversy was that of iconoclasm. In 730 CE, Emperor Leo III formally outlawed the use of images or representations of Christ, considering it idol worship. This enraged the Pope and Western barbarian kings, many of whom had a history of using symbolic objects in worship. Relations between the East and West were further strained.

In 780, just after Pluto entered Capricorn, Emperor Leo IV (grandson of Leo III) died, leaving his 10-year-old son poised to take power. Due to his age, his mother would rule in his stead as regent, and Irene of Athens would briefly become one of the most powerful women the world. However, the relationship between mother and son degenerated into antagonism and violence during this transit and in 797, as Pluto entered Aquarius, Irene had her son’s eyes gouged out, formally deposing him from rule and ascending herself to the position of Emperor. How Plutonian! Yet, this would be short-lived and prove to be one of those Pluto in Aquarius plot twists.

(Below: Irene of Athens, from Alamay Images)

The Pope in Rome had been warming up to a Frankish warlord named Charlemagne and wanted to crown him as Augustus, however it was tradition that only Byzantine leaders could assume the title of Roman Emperor. Irene had earlier ended the Iconoclasm controversy, which she thought would help relations with the West. They unfortunately had craftier designs and the Pope argued that women were unfit to rule so the position of Augustus or emperor was still up for grabs. On Christmas day, 800 CE, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne, Holy Roman Emperor. Irene was incensed, but could do little as her own nobility was challenging her power and Muslim invaders gathered at her borders. Irene was herself deposed in 802, but the Wests deception resulted in an effective political schism between East and West.

(Below: Charlemagne portrait by Scheuren)

Then, Pluto entered Capricorn once again in 1024, the same year Henry II, Holy Roman Emperor, died leaving no heir to the throne and effectively terminating his own dynasty. He had been zealously pious and was the one to convince the Pope to include the “Filioque” in the Nicaean Creed, which was a major point of contention with the Byzantine Church. Henry had also offered asylum to a Lombard leader of a rebellion against the Byzantines. Prior to this, the Lombard’s had petitioned the Normans to assist in the rebellion, but they would eventually take it over, conquering most of southern Italy. Domestically, Henry II was trying to consolidate his own imperial power again, however, the nobility were growing increasingly autonomous and had been developing their own particular German identity.

When Henry II died, the nobles gathered to elect a new king, Conrad II who would reign during nearly the entire Pluto transit through Capricorn. Upon assuming the throne, Conrad immediately set to consolidating his power like his predecessor had done. Italy wanted to secede from the Holy Roman Empire and argued that it had developed its own identity and become its own nation. Conrad argued back with a nautical metaphor that the whole crew must be loyal to the ship, even when a captain dies. He then launched campaigns into Italy, reasserting his dominance. Conrad died in 1039 and his son, Henry III, took the throne just after Pluto entered Aquarius in the 1041. He and his son, Henry IV, would see continued uprisings in both German and Italian lands. Relations with the Papacy were also growing more contentious. The hold of the Holy Roman Empire over western Europe was waning.

Meanwhile, the Western and Eastern empires continued to feud, and the Normans were still in Italy essentially acting as mercenaries, switching sides as it suited their own designs. The Normans had become fiercely Catholic though and, after a brief skirmish with the Papacy, they convinced Pope Leo IX to join an alliance with them against the Byzantines. The Normans had conquered the former Lombard lands on the east coast of Italy, which the Byzantines had previously claimed. In 1053, Pope Leo ordered all Greek Churches in formerly Byzantine lands to conform to the Latin rite or be closed. In response, Eastern Patriarch, Michael I, ordered the closure of all Latin Churches in Constantinople. A Papal Legate responded by dropping a Bull of Excommunication addressed to Michael on the altar of the Hagia Sophia, one of the holiest sites of the Orthodox Church. Michael responded by excommunicating the Papal Legate. By this time Pope Leo IX had already died, so historians question the legitimacy of the Legate itself, but by this time, the eastern and western churches were essentially irreconcilable.

That brings us back to 1272, Pluto in Capricorn, and the final nail in the coffin to any hope of reunification between East and West. Byzantine Emperor, Michael VIII had expressed interest in reunification after reconquering Constantinople. Pope Gregory X immediately called the Second Council of Lyon and the Greeks acquiesced to using the “Filioque” in the Nicaean Creed. The Greek delegation was even asked to recite the Creed with the new language inserted, multiple times. Back in the Byzantine East, most Christians opposed reunification with the Latins, who they had grown to detest. Michael died in 1282 and his son, Andronicus II gave scathing denouncements of reuniting with the west. Pluto entered Aquarius in 1287, just several years after Andronicus publicly denounced reunification. His rise to the throne would prove to be the beginning of the end of the Byzantine Empire. The Roman Church would dominate western Europe thereafter, but the conclusion to the rivalry also began a decline for them as well, which would culminate in the reformation.

Ok, so what does this convoluted story tell us about now? What should be clear after all that drama, is that Pluto, for all its pain, obsession, and death, also heralds progressive developments in society, despite its diminutive size. In every example in this little essay, Pluto can be found pushing humans along through violent crises that lead to greater understanding and awareness of will or intent. I make no secret of the fact that I have been questioning all the doctrines and occult teachings that I have been studying for 25 years. That said, the teachings on the outer planets from Alice Bailey’s “Esoteric Astrology,” are invaluable. I have found these significations and correspondences to readily apply in most situations with clients. Alice Bailey describes Pluto as a “First Ray” planet, meaning it distributes the energy of Will or Power. She writes, “the destructive power of the first ray, focused in Pluto, brings change, darkness, and death. To this intensity and potency of Pluto must be added the forceful and dynamic energy of the planet Mars. This brings the entire human family, a well as the individual, under the law of strife[.]” - “Esoteric Astrology”

Pluto brings crises and destroys the old, the worn out, the useless, and the rigid anachronistic ideas holding us back. He is like Shiva, the Destroyer, who smashes forms that no longer serve the indwelling life. He is a liberator. He brings justice in his midst with his violence. Pluto is also healer. Alice Bailey writes, “Pluto is a deity with the attributes of the serpent. He is a healer, a giver of health, spiritual and physical and of enlightenment.” He reconciles cleavages through crisis and violence. Just as we saw the pattern of hubris lead to abuse of power while Pluto transited Capricorn throughout history, we also saw it expose the weakness of that power and bring about a reversal as Pluto entered Aquarius as well. This time around, the poor and laboring classes are being pushed to their limit of suffering and degradation, while the owning and investment class abuse them with impunity. What will happen? How will this turn out in 2023 – through 2043? Perhaps we’ll see more people beat the ruling class at their own game, as with the AMC stock controversy. Anyone’s guess is as good as mine, but if history is any indicator, those in power should probably be concerned.

[Sources: Wikipedia, Britannica, and Kings and Generals documentary series, see YouTube]