Saturn in Aquarius: "Pandemic grief can't affect me if I am beautiful and rich!" (feat. Pluto in Capricorn)
How's that story you're telling yourself? You know, the one that started in 2020?
“At this point in the pandemic, more people care about being ugly than they do about getting sick and dying” is a thought I had a few days ago when thinking about the effects of Saturn in Aquarius.
In Astrology, Saturn is the planet of responsibility, (slow) growth, time, work, and reality. Pluto represents death and rebirth, transformation, oppression, and shadow. When planets passing through a zodiac sign, it brings those themes to surface in correspondence with that sign. This article talks about the effects of transit Saturn in Aquarius which started March 22, 2020 and will end March 7th, 2023, in addition to the effects of Pluto in Capricorn (November 27, 2008 to January 21, 2024) and Pluto in Aquarius (January 21, 2024 to January 26, 2044).
Blinded by reality
I don’t blame people for escapism ever since the pandemic started but I do wish they showed more care for everyone else. After all, the quarantine aspect of it brought to light systems of oppression that deepened everyone’s level of understanding. It’s exhausting to hold space for politics when you see people blatantly pretending like people aren’t still getting sick and dying.
There was already a rise in commodification of the Self and our lifestyles starting from when Saturn entered Capricorn in 2017, but Saturn in Aquarius empowered people in their individualism in polarizing ways. People were powerless against a virus whose end we could not predict; so eventually they realized, “the one thing I can control is myself.”
I observed this in the rise of influencer culture; each and every aesthetic you can think of is commodified. To name a few, cottagecore, academia, soft girl, clean girl, etc. It’s like people would rather invest in a metaphorical mask than deal with their feelings. I also have to add, many of these aesthetic trends happen on Tiktok and if you are not on that app, you might’ve not heard of these at all. However, “back-to-normal”/pre-COVID life as a selling point exists in other media forms. What better time to sell things and experiences we don’t need when everyone is depressed and grieving of the time we lost and are losing from this pandemic?
I also noticed this common narrative on Tiktok a lot of people are experiencing — the Want for something BIG to happen, something MAGICAL, and I feel as though it's a direct consequence of the pandemic's influence on our autonomy and freedom. It's like my desire to travel is there, alongside my fear of getting COVID again or any other restriction and hindrance popping up. I ask myself if indulgence is worth my health and I badly want to say "the health of others" but it almost feels taboo to say that I still wear my mask for others, seeing that so few people are doing the same for me.
This past month, my debt caught up to me and I had to tell myself “Listen, I want to support you (small businesses) so much, but at this point, supporting you would mean me having to work an extra shift and take time off rest.” Partly because I am not in my early twenties anymore, I realized I can no longer afford the lifestyle I had pre-COVID. And by that, I mean going to at least one cafe a week, splurging on accessories I don’t need to support small businesses, traveling more often, and not having a pet.
It’s weird seeing people completely disregard their health and the health of others. I think to myself “Do you not care about dying?” And it’s unfortunate, I would believe people if they answer that question with a “no.” The world is going to end in 15 years, anyway. People are dying anyway… so I might as well indulge in my life while I’m here are thoughts I’ve heard quite often, especially from other Gen Zers/those who have natal Pluto in Sagittarius.
I think what people, especially young people fail to see is that people were always dying prior to the pandemic and the world as we know it will end and is ending because life is the cycle of death and rebirth.
When thinking about past Saturn and Pluto ingresses, I realized that 100 years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to go to college and post-secondary in general was still a new phenomenon. When Pluto was in Gemini and Saturn was in Leo in the late 19th century, society had children working because they wanted to exploit their cheap labor. When Pluto was in Leo and Saturn in Taurus in the 1940s, labor shortages influenced youth to focus on full-time work instead of education.1 The creation of pop culture in the 1940s was due to businesses recognizing that youth2 were a demographic that would garner a lot of income, because while parents were working to pay for the basic necessities, youth had disposable income.
What is interesting about the Saturn in Aquarius transit (2020 to 2023) is that youth were not the sole focused demographic. When most people were forced inside of their homes, businesses realized that they could capitalize on the domestic life of all age cohorts. What are people going to do at home? Eat, bake, cook, indulge in media — and so the boom of small businesses happened, anyone could be an influencer, anyone could have home cafes, anyone could work at home, everyone could escape to kpop and kdrama fantasies. I will give credit to the fact that these new forms of income, gadgets, and transnationalism created new forms of accessibility and an openness to other cultures as the majority of the world were grieving, escaping, and exploring together.
Looking back at these transits, most notably the long Pluto transits, gives us insight into these words and concepts: “change,” “permanent,” and “control.” As someone who experienced the once-in-a-lifetime Pluto transit to my Sun, Pluto transits feel like death. They are heavy and the changes are so grand that they can be traumatizing. They ask a lot of you, more than you are actually ready for but whether you like it or not, the change is happening and you realize you need to lean into it. Pluto transits feel like looking back at what you thought would be there only to see something completely different, unrecognizable, gone. It’s like that scene in the Hunger Games after the quarter quell; Katniss is told District 12 (her home) no longer exists. It was destroyed. The more you try to go back to what once was, the more frustration you will feel. Are you going to let Pluto drive you to death or join the revolution?
As Pluto is in its final degree, the themes of its transit in Capricorn have fully infiltrated our psyches: capitalism, work, rest, consumption. Dreams that we once had may no longer align with us. A lot of people are realizing they just want community, friends, a family, stability3 — instead of working hard and receiving little material reward; another concept that we have evaluated during Pluto in Capricorn. And this exhaustion that we feel is just the beginning of what revolutionary changes will happen in the next 20 years when Pluto enters Aquarius (starting November 2024, but we’ll get a sneak peak for a few months from March 23 - May 1st of 2023).
Since Pluto will retrograde back into Capricorn twice more until November 2024, this period until then is one of transition and processing of the grief, fear, and depression we continue to experience because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is also supported by Saturn’s transit in Pisces from March 7, 2023 to February 14, 2026). Saturn will work on Piscean themes — illusion, dreams, collective consciousness, illness. We can expect people to remove the metaphorical masks that were created during Saturn’s transit in Aquarius; the coping mechanisms and stories we told ourselves to survive because again, “the only person I can control is myself.”
Pluto in Aquarius and Saturn in Pisces will bring more focus to the community. There will be more conversations about how sad and angry we’ve been about how this virus has robbed us of time, no matter our age. We are grieving time and our relationship to it because we’ve realized that every moment, place, person that was taken away from us during the pandemic are what gave our lives meaning.
Reiterating what other astrologers have been saying, I expect the death of ‘celebrity/influencer’ culture, realizing how much we still uphold Whiteness, people reverting back to offline modes of documenting life, and mass questioning of our governments. I also agree on the emphasis of pluralism. I think, at least for a bit, people will still attempt to live in their made-up worlds refusing to face reality… until it hits them and maybe it literally will (Pluto is extreme). I think the new “cool” and mass focus will be on socio-economic awareness because at this point, if you aren’t for the (marginalized) people or the “global majority” and recognizing systems of oppression, might as well pass the mic and listen. It is hard work, but it is healing work. The future is no longer our kids4, it is right now and we deserve it.
bell hooks, born during the Pluto in Leo generation mentioned the oppression of children (Leo represents children) in her book “All About Love: New Visions.”
We do have to keep in mind that these were mostly youth of the white, suburban demographic, and that is connected to colonialism and many desires people are rooted in Whiteness.
Pluto in Capricorn also meant working with the themes of its sister sign — Cancer. Family, heritage, home are inherently Cancerian. It is important to consider the sign in opposition for more insight.
*Pluto in Aquarius: less nuclear families, more people opting for adoption or not having kids at all. Aquarius (humanity, community) opposes Leo (children, Self). We are the kids of this world. And by that, I mean happiness does not end when childhood ends. I say this in opposition to the saying that “We work hard for our children... so they have a better world” because it implies that the world isn’t flawed when we are children. The world when I was a child would have been different if I were born white. As children, as teenagers, as adults, as seniors, we deserve the life we want. Pluto in Aquarius — power to the people, to the collective, to realizing our biggest dreams.
This article was originally published on Substack on February 25, 2023.