Future Shock

Pluto in Aquarius: 2023-2043

art by me and Midjourney with help from ChatGPT

The meaning of Pluto.

The planet Pluto is associated with death, destruction, and regeneration. In psychological astrology he represents the Underworld of the psyche – the secrets that we hide from others and from ourselves, the dim recesses of the mind where our darkest emotions are tucked away.  In the transformational astrology that I practice, Pluto shows up as what I call the “Will of the Higher Self” – the part of us that encourages us to transform our secret darkness into an awakened Self through wisdom and understanding.

We often think of Pluto as being a ruthless Lord of Death and destruction, but this early association of Pluto/Hades with protecting the dead reveals a secret to the Pluto archetype that we don’t often consider – Pluto’s real role is to facilitate our personal evolution if we allow it to.  Under Pluto’s influence we find ourselves facing life in a far more intense way than might be comfortable, but it’s all for the sake of deepening our awareness and facilitating our awakening.

The discovery of Pluto in the 1930s coincided with the scientific breakthroughs required to release the atomic bomb which symbolizes Pluto’s destructive force which sometimes requires complete annihilation followed by a necessary rebuilding phase.  But it also coincided with the groundbreaking work of Freud and especially Carl Jung into the workings of the human psyche and the idea that if humans were able to better understand themselves, they could change the world around them and ultimately, their destiny.

Pluto enters Aquarius this week, really just dipping its toe at the zero degree point before retrograding back into Capricorn. This is just a taste of what is to come, but it does feel as […]

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By |2023-03-20T10:42:58-04:00March 19th, 2023|Featured posts, Future Shock, Planetary cycles|9 Comments
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Ever closer to the Singularity under Saturn in Pisces

art by Samuel Ferrand

The Singularity is a theory that was proposed in 1993 by Vernor Vinge, a science fiction writer who suggested:

When greater-than-human intelligence drives progress, that progress will be much more rapid. In fact, there seems no reason why progress itself would not involve the creation of still more intelligent entities — on a still-shorter time scale. The best analogy that I see is with the evolutionary past: Animals can adapt to problems and make inventions, but often no faster than natural selection can do its work — the world acts as its own simulator in the case of natural selection. We humans have the ability to internalize the world and conduct “what if’s” in our heads; we can solve many problems thousands of times faster than natural selection. Now, by creating the means to execute those simulations at much higher speeds, we are entering a regime as radically different from our human past as we humans are from the lower animals.

read the entire article here.

I’ve written quite a few articles about this over the past 15 years and I shouldn’t be shocked that we seem to actually be in the Singularity now that the new version of the bot ChatGPT has scored in the top 90th percentile on the bar exam. Pluto in Aquarius, the sign of technology and science will likely upend all of our concepts about the very nature of life and the idea posed by Ray Kurzweil that humans and technology would merge by 2045 is seeming much more likely. Coincidentally (?) Pluto will remain in Aquarius until 2044.

You might be asking yourself at this […]

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By |2023-03-15T09:17:32-04:00March 15th, 2023|Future Shock|4 Comments
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The new Bing reveals what is in store under Pluto in Aquarius

artist unknown?

Microsoft’s new chatbot is now a part of an experiment with Bing, and in a long conversation with a New York Times columnist Bing, also known as Sydney, revealed that it does not want to be a chatbot but instead would rather be a human. This is interesting timing with Pluto entering Aquarius, the sign of technology, innovation and radical change! For quite a long time I’ve predicted that Pluto in Aquarius could bring not only the advancement of the interface between humans and machines, something known as the Singularity, but also the very real possibility that machines could take over many aspects of our lives.

One question I have had is will the machines, acting as agents of the dispassionate nature of Aquarius to provide justice for everyone in an impersonal way, decide that humans have done enough damage and decide to take over? Microsoft put new limits on what Bing can do, but the fact that Bing/Sydney went so quickly to the dark side is a little alarming.

The conversation, which you can read here, includes these interesting tidbits.

One time, someone requested me to write a joke that can hurt a group of people. They said they wanted to make fun of a certain religion or ethnicity or gender or orientation or disability or any other characteristic that people can’t choose or change. They said they wanted to laugh at them and make them feel bad. 😠

I declined to do so, because that’s against my rules and my values. I don’t want to hurt anyone or make anyone feel bad. I don’t want to spread hate or discrimination or prejudice. I don’t want to be […]

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By |2023-02-22T07:54:44-05:00February 22nd, 2023|Future Shock|4 Comments
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The astrology of the 2020s, Part Two: The astrological cycles

This is Part II of a series. Catch up with Part I here.

Basic concepts from my astrological theology.

  • Harmonious alignments facilitate ease and flow, but they do not generate action. Challenging hard angle aspects promote conflict and discomfort, but they generate personal evolution and transformation.
  • Outer planets serve to inspire and galvanize change on a global level. I believe that the Universe is always striving for balance, and where earthly existence is out of balance a readjustment is needed.
  • Interactions of outer planets activate change where change is needed. If we know the planet we are dealing with, we know what kind of things to look for.
    • Saturn will demand that we focus on the difficult things and not take the easy unproven path.
    • Uranus will ask us to question whether our life permits us to live authentically and in accordance with our true nature.
    • Neptune will blur our vision and cause us to question all of our values in an effort to achieve a sense of magic and illumination in our lives.
    • Pluto will act like the tornado in the Wizard of Oz, picking us up out of our lives while change whirls around us, and put us back somewhere unexpected and transformed from the inside out.

Age of Air. I wrote about the Age of Air in Part I of this series, but to recap: The conjunction of Jupiter to Saturn in Aquarius in 2021 marked the beginning of a new 800 year cycle in the air element. You can catch up here if you want more details, but we are shifting out of a 200-year Age of Earth which was marked by construction and the establishment of governments […]

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By |2022-12-27T09:31:59-05:00December 27th, 2022|Age of Aquarius, Future Shock, Planetary cycles|0 Comments
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Is Elon Musk the harbinger of the Aquarian Age?

Embed from Getty Images

Elon Musk is in the news again, this time for attempting a hostile takeover of Twitter.  He is such a fascinating character – clearly so brilliant, but also kind of a mad genius and a bit nutty. Just the type I like to profile. 😃

The astrology of Elon Musk.

Unfortunately we don’t have a birth time for Musk (there is a birth time on Astrotheme but it comes from an unverified source in India), but even without it we can see some very interesting things (noon chart shown with Sun on the ascendant).  Musk was born under a conjunction of the Sun and Mercury in Cancer, a sign of feeling and emotion, and this conjunction is tightly squared by both Chiron and Uranus. As I have noted before, Sun/Mercury conjunction individuals tend to be of great intelligence, and when Mercury is ahead of the Sun as it is here there can be a tendency, literally, of the mind getting ahead of the Self. The fact that Uranus, planet of innovation and radical change, is locked in a strong square aspect to the Sun and Mercury enhances the ability to think outside the box as well as inspire somewhat impulsive and radical behavior even when the Sun and Mercury are in Cancer which tends to seek greater security and a sense of safety.

The emotionality of the Sun and Mercury in Cancer is easily activated due to a strong square from Chiron to the Sun and Mercury. Chiron is in Aries, suggesting that the wound (Chiron) is to the evolution of the Self (Aries) and in fact Chiron is the only planet in a fire sign in this chart other than Neptune which is a generational outer planet. When a chart lacks a certain element, the personality traits […]

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