Pluto’s Last Retrograde in Capricorn: Surveying What We’ve Sown

By Janessa Quinn

Unless you live under a rock, you’ve probably heard lots of chatter in the astrological community (and dare I say popular culture?)  about Pluto moving into Aquarius. It is often paired with grandiose declarations about “The Age of Aquarius” or “the dawning of a new age” or other clickbaity, attention-grabbing, sensationalized statements. Like most things with pop astrology, there might be a little kernel of truth within those claims; however, we can dig into the essence of astrological and archetypal theory to suss out some more grounded meaning and perspective of the times we are living through. 

To start, let’s break this down into more digestible pieces.

Pluto is the farthest planet away from the sun in the solar system. This in turn creates a very long journey for Pluto to make its trip all the way around the sun, roughly 248 years. In astrological terms, this also means Pluto takes a really long time to move through each sign. It can vary depending on the speed at which the planet is moving (determined by what stretch of orbit Pluto is in). This can take anywhere from 12 to 30 years.

Image credit: NASA

On an archetypal level, Pluto being the farthest planet from life (as we know it) connotes it as being death-like in nature. In mythology, Pluto is the Roman counterpart of Hades, the Greek god who rules the underworld. This can sound really scary right off the bat, but I assure you, while this could be taken literally, 99.9% of the time the presence of this archetype actually signifies a metaphorical death of sorts that inevitably leads to a rebirth or a new way of being. Think, for a light example, something happening that keeps you from participating in a favorite hobby that in turn leads to you discovering a new hobby that you find even more exciting. 

Pluto being so far from Earth and the sun additionally signifies that its implied archetypes affect us more on a collective level versus the personal. This is not to say that it won’t deeply affect individuals personally. Just that the personal effects, like all transits and natal placements, are highly nuanced depending on the individual’s chart. And that because of the slower-moving pace of Pluto, its effects might be more noticeable on a broader scale, with its ingress into signs indicating the emergence of new eras in human history.

As for retrogrades, just like the most commonly talked about Mercury retrograde, they are a time when a planet appears to be moving backwards in the sky and thus are a time for looking back. Do you know all those “re-” words? Revisit, revise, relocate, redo, revive, repeat, retrieve (and any others you can recall)? Those are all the words you should think about and embody in a retrograde. Outer planets like Pluto are retrograde much of the year, so it is not a rare occurrence; however, this instance in particular is the final one Pluto will make during our lifetimes that takes place in Capricorn, due to the length of Pluto’s orbit. Once Pluto enters Aquarius on November 19, 2024, it will stay there until 2040.

Capricorn is a cardinal sign, meaning it likes to start things. Cardinal signs signify the beginning of a new season. The season of Capricorn begins at the darkest point of the year, the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. But this darkest point is also where the light starts to grow again. From this point forward, little by little, the days start to grow longer.

Another way we can think of the first ingress of a planet into a cardinal sign is like the planting of a seed, the first act of a story that will unfold over the planet’s journey through the following fixed sign and will end in the succeeding mutable sign. We dig a hole, put the seed in and cover it up. It starts in the dark and eventually pushes itself through the soil to reach the sunlight, and in doing so, becomes visible.

With Pluto entering Aquarius, the fixed sign where we will see the story unfold, we have had a glimpse of what is sprouting. What has become visible since Pluto moved into Aquarius in March of 2023? Sometimes, these first emergences are not yet enough to identify the plant that is growing. We can think of this retrograde period starting September 1, 2024, as an opportunity for clarification on what exactly were the seeds that were planted back in 2008.

In the U.S., we can’t seem to bring up 2008 without mentioning two other major events in the same breath: the election of Obama and the financial crisis. We have obviously seen the implications of these events unfolding since then; however, in more recent years as we make this transition of Pluto into Aquarius and we are further in time from said events, the deeper effects are starting to become more visible.

On a personal level, we can look back at the Capricorn house in our chart for insight into how Pluto has completely refashioned that area of life for us over the course of the past 16 years. What was tilled up in that field? What seeds are now taking root there?

This last retrograde into Capricorn is a time to get extremely clear on a personal and collective level on what it is we are sowing. What seeds are we nurturing? What do they need to survive? And to thrive?

Once we can start to identify our seedlings, we can begin to cultivate our crop. We can tend to them with water, sunlight, weeding, and attention. And any good gardener knows, that if we let all the seedlings keep growing, they will eventually become too crowded for the plants to thrive. What seedlings do we need to thin? What ideas or priorities need to be removed or set aside for the most important ones to thrive? 

What do we, both collectively and personally, need to let go of to allow more space and energy to flow to what we value most?

These are Capricorn questions. Capricorn is an earth sign, a gardener, and a world builder through and through. Ruled by Saturn and Mars, this sign understands the commitment and, perhaps most importantly, the editing needed to ensure survival and success. These two planets are malefic in nature, meaning they achieve their goals in ways we humans might consider painful or difficult. When we can face the nature of what these planets do more objectively, thinking about limiting and severing as ways of also accomplishing something of value, we can begin to integrate the lessons of Capricorn into a new way of being once we step forward with Pluto in Aquarius in November.

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About the Author

Janessa Quinn (she/her) Janessa is an artist, astrologer, yogi, nature lover, mom of 3 married to the love of her life and based in MN. As a student and practitioner of Hellenistic astrology within the context of our modern world, Janessa is passionate about connecting people to their own beauty through the gift of astrology. She finds so much inspiration, freedom, and love through the lens of astrology and experiences so much joy by sharing this illumination with others. When Janessa is not reading charts or studying astrology, you can find her working the old 9-5, momming, and probably either cooking or eating something. Or you know, just vibing and daydreaming as a true Piscean does.

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