Information is power; groundedness is power
Modern media & Pluto in Aquarius, Neptune in Pisces, and Neptune in Aries
One of the most important things to do while Pluto is in Aquarius is to get control of your own thoughts and inner world.
While Pluto is in Aquarius, the way that we are “controlled” shifts more toward perspective, especially in the US because of where Aquarius is in the US’ natal chart, but this is something that is going to be happening worldwide. Aquarius is systems of information – the internet, news, media, social media, phones, the postal system, all of it – and Pluto wants to control & have power. While Pluto is in Aquarius, information is power. Who controls the flow of information? That’s who has the power during Pluto in Aquarius.
Pluto in Aquarius is also the power of the people. We have power if we are able to control our own thoughts and our own inner world, if we are able to lean into what we should have learned from Saturn in Aquarius between 2020 and early 2023. During that time, the winds of the world were whipping violently around us, and we were learning how to remain steady, centered, and grounded rather than emotionally reacting to every gust in the world around us. Aquarius is an air sign – it’s got the winds swirling around us. But it’s also a fixed sign that is ruled by Saturn, so it’s also concerned with steadiness, certainty, fixity.
While Pluto is in Aquarius, the more you can control your own mind and your own internal state, the more power you have, and the more useful you are to the world. If you can join with other people and encourage them to do the same, that’s where we get the real power. Working with other people while each individual is able to maintain their own walking meditation – that’s some of the best of Pluto in Aquarius.
In a 2020 article for Vox, Sean Illing says, “Media fragmentation, the explosion of the internet, political polarization, curated timelines, and echo chambers [...] allows a ‘flood the zone with shit’ strategy to work.” Illing explains how the “zone-flooding” strategy upends the traditional role of the news media – to distinguish fact from fiction and present the facts to the public for the sake of clear-headed decision-making – by flooding the media with “an avalanche of competing stories” intended to incite a sort of intellectual exhaustion. This intellectual exhaustion then leads the public to believe that, as Peter Pomerantsev puts it, “the truth is unknowable.” Exhausted and overstimulated, we give up on ever knowing the truth and we surrender to the lie.
This describes the age of Neptune in Pisces to a T.
Neptune entered Pisces for the first time in April 2011, and with it dawned of an era of wild misinformation, cult-like beliefs, increased media deception, terms like “alternative facts” and “fake news”, and more. Incidentally, around the same time that Neptune entered Pisces in 2011, Donald Trump began promoting the racist, baseless conspiracy theory that then-President Barack Obama was not actually born in the United States. This was arguably the start to Trump’s political career as we know it. For over 13 years now he has relied on Neptune-in-Piscean tactics like these to rustle up cult-like political support. But now, a new future is nearly upon us.