What February's Pluto Return Means

If you've heard the buzz about Pluto's return in February 2022 but are confused about what it means, it is sure to mean many things. But I will walk through my interpretation of this cosmic event, which will likely send ripples through our systems until they look new. Pluto is about death, after all.

And this is the first time that the U.S., as the country formed from colonists officially in the 1770's, has experienced a Pluto return, which only happens every 248 years. So it is both the first and last one we will experience as well.

Pluto is returning to the same place (the same degree in the same sign) that it was in the U.S. birth chart on July 4, 1776 on February 22, 2022. It may sound hokey to make a birth chart of a country as the land of the country itself was here long before 1776, but we aren't measuring the birth of the land but rather, the birth of the U.S. culture as we know it.

Returns in astrology, like the legendary Saturn Return, which is perhaps the most colloquially discussed, are about returning to a climate with new information--a revisitation in order to take stock of where you've traveled in order to make changes to where you're headed. There's a building upon something, a palimpsest of sorts, with all Returns. The symbolism of Pluto is linked to power but also death and transformation; the Tower Card in tarot is what I connect with as an image when I think of Pluto. So while a Saturn Return generally brings us to a place of reckoning with our internal structures and where we are in our personal progress toward our dharma, a Pluto Return brings us to a collective reckoning with our power, who has it, and how it is used. Pluto is the burning tower, the death that will inevitably make room for something new.

Many astrologers, like myself, believe we really started experiencing this transit when Pluto entered the sign of Capricorn in November 2008, which is the month in which Barack Obama, the U.S.'s first-ever black president, was elected. It's also the time that the U.S. went through a recession and led into years of political upheaval and, most recently, a global pandemic.

So to consider where we're heading this February, think about the past 14 years and but then also back to 1776, when colonists wanted to break away from taxes and the UK as a rulership. Think about the energy of the time, of what was at stake and what was revealed. The arguments for freedom in 1776 were both economical as well as spiritual and social, just like in recent years. "No taxation without representation" was the mantra of the colonists. Theirs was a mission of personal freedom, change, and power as was the surge of energy behind Obama as he campaigned for change and when his presidency changed history in that person of color--part of an oppressed group that remains systemically oppressed--represented the highest seat in the most powerful country in the world for the first time.

So, in 2008, for the first time the history of the U.S. since Pluto was in Capricorn, a black man turned over the tables of power and changed the system. In 1776, a group of colonists overcame the world power at that time and changed our world profoundly.

That's some Pluto-timing.

So, I think we're in for something big with Pluto's Return this year.

As I've said before: I do not view astrology as a study of how the planets make us all do things on Earth. Astrology says as above, so below; astrology says that the sky and the Earth mirror one another and that the sky is merely a road map of the energy that we will experience on Earth ahead. It shows us what is likely to be. So, long before November 2008, astrologers knew it would be a big year--because Pluto does that. It makes a statement that you cannot miss.

Now, just as I do with all natal birth charts, I view the House in which the planet resides to be as important as the sign, or quality, of that planet. In the U.S., Pluto is in the Second House, which stitches together power and money inextricably into the fabric of this country's cultural identity and especially as it is in Capricorn, the sign of dollars-and-cents and capitalism itself.

This February, I expect there to be some kind of transformation of something relating to power in this country that particularly upsets the financial bedrock of our country. Looking at the build-up to this moment--the pandemic, the intense and open political divisions--I foresee something to take place of the kind of historical significance that was July 4, 1776, or some kind of revealing or deep truth to surface. Personally, this will affect us in a variety of ways just as it will collectively; any upset to the economic world power is felt the world over.

In the end of the year, there is going to additionally be a square between the Sun, Moon, and Mars and Pluto, so this placement for Pluto, fueled by the Pluto return, as a reckoning for the U.S., could be huge.

All of this energy, to recap, means that in the coming months, we may experience an echo of what was experienced by the colonists who signed the Declaration of Independence. With all of the Aquarian energy in the sky and Uranus leading us through this year, my sense is that there will be a revisiting of this kind of revolt against major structures in the name of returning power to the people. I suspect that there will be progress, and particularly of a social nature. The colonists took advantage of Indigenous people and the land in the name of asserting their independence from government--a very Capricornean concept--and I'm curious to see how this picture shifts over 200 years later, when Indigenous rights have been a national focus for especially the last decade-plus, and when our greatest oppressor is what we erected in the place of the government the colonists were revolting against, our own capitalist system.

Think, again, about 2008 and 1776: think about the tenet of equality, about all men being created equal, and how this was integral to the language of 1776 and 2008, however distorted broadly though progressive for their times. How will Aquarian energy add to this conversation of equality?

Pluto will not stay in Capricorn for long, which I think means that, true to Plutonic form we will experience a major shift in a condensed period. Pluto will move into Aquarius in March 2023, then retrograde a couple of times into Capricorn before its return official ends in November 2024.

The collapses Pluto initiates have purpose; let's not forget that or that this year, we have a major boost in humanitarian energy in the sky. Looking at the year ahead, there is conflict in store but also innovation and social progress. One rarely comes without the other.