As 2024 turns into the last quarter

by David A. Wheatley

​As the year 2024 turns into the last quarter, Pluto retrograded to Capricorn for its final wrap-up of themes it obsessed about since entering that sign in 2008. It won’t get back there for a couple hundred years.
Old school ideas of pyramid-like power structures are Pluto themes in Capricorn. One characterization is the irritating power obsessed power assumed male dominant power tripping, and then the pushback.  We saw a ‘Me Too’ rebellion from women collectively pushing back. Corporate, government and dictatorial/military power structures under pressure to change. Self-declared Kings insisting others fall in line and stop complaining. Discussion began and legislation passed in 2010 in the USA called Citizens United. This decided that business entities and corporations had the same opportunity to donate large sums of money to politicians as individual citizens do. Everyone knew then that putting this kind of cash in the food trough would attract every pig. Everyone knew and had railed for years before this to curb political power with term limits, remove the ability of politicians to raise their own salaries, regulate lobbying. Everyone knew. But it passed because the male-dominant Supreme Court began to align itself with an old male-dominant lifestyle, which they decided was consistent with the Constitution. The right to an abortion was taken away by a “supreme” order from the top down. The right to shoot someone in self-defense if you feel afraid, even though they don’t threaten you - another order handed down from above. Police as authority figures crossing the line of law enforcement into execution. Individuals seeking power to express their personal hellish Plutonic horrors and enter a place like a school where they dominate by using a firearm to seize the power of life and death. Those are all Pluto in Capricorn in an extremely unbalanced side of the Lord of Hell. Pluto revealed an ill unbalance in a dark abuse of power. A number of things will break all that down and reform them after Pluto enters the air sign Aquarius where power structures will transform.
Many people did not know that when politicians are fundraising, after the campaign is over they could dispense the money to other campaigns or, what’s happened under Trump, hang on to the money they raised for future uses, creating a nice slush fund to pay some bills.  Donations that become a form of a bribe. This is the kind of honey the ‘Pluto in Capricorn bees’ want to nurture. There’s a move afoot to create an ethics code for the Supreme Court Justices who passed Citizens United because of abuses on the part of some Justices. The extent of their gift collecting/bribe went how far? Only intrepid reporters are finding out, the Supreme Justices aren’t required to reveal it. 

---

​Next year when Pluto is in Aquarius, changes will come to these and other power administrating roles. They will be argued and fought until finally they are legislated into reality.
The world always has autocrats or dictators pretending to be wanted by the citizens. In the period with Pluto in Capricorn the powerful have thrived; even the US has flirted with having a dictator. Russia’s charade elections kept Putin at the head of a long table. But with Pluto having exposed the manipulations of Pluto in Capricorn, it’s going to be a different tune with Pluto in Aquarius. This doesn’t mean problems are cured and everyone lives happily ever after. It’s a shift of how mankind manages power, and collectives like countries or individuals will find that they need to work in a different dynamic than the one that worked in the last 17 years. How does such a shift take place? The resistance to it requires the forces of inspiration and evolution to be greater as the curtain is pulled back on the energy supporting the old pattern. The resistance can be sufficient to bring civil disorder or even the breakdown of the society’s structure - whatever it takes for transformation to happen. New patterns begin to form; might as well get on board. 

​The United States got its independence when Pluto was at the tail end of Capricorn and has been in a Pluto Return for a few years now. Breaking away from the dictatorship as perceived in 1776 Europe (England), with some assistance in the revolt from Europe (France), the US progressed Pluto entered Aquarius when the US broke away from King George and formed a new government with a new structure. Pluto will now leave Capricorn again for only the second time in the history of the US.
Americans again have the opportunity to reform government with what it's going through now.  At this time, the description of the two choices paints two pictures of a very different future depending on electing the man who would be king or the woman who would lead and raise up the nation.
Since 2016 I’ve had a personal bit of amusement imagining that Trump is the reincarnation of King George from 1776. This time he’s over here on the western shore of the Atlantic Ocean, spitefully breaking apart the thing he couldn’t have, like a kid fighting over a toy. He is serving planetary evolution in the world, like him or not. It isn’t that he’s so important that he needs to be King of America, it’s that there are so many people in 2024 America who want a king.
Resisting evolution leads to angst and lost opportunity. The nation as a whole will evolve or devolve. The shape of the nation is going to change with Pluto leaving Capricorn, and entering a sign with a very different character and part of life where the power Pluto is always associated with will be a collective, not a single person atop a pyramid.
With Neptune in Pisces since 2011, the ability of people to dive head first in the Kool-Aid pool and/or be inspired in ways they wouldn’t allow themselves to be before had also arrived. Neptune in Pisces is the blurring of the edges of reality, the blurring of a boundary between consciousness and the stored experiences in the unconscious. Some people are very clear about the material in these two distinct realms, but many are not and project their own psychology onto what’s there.
Be it a spiritual quest in Pisces or belief in a teacher, a guru, a political movement, or something dressed up as a beautiful psychologically fulfilling desire, Neptune in Pisces removes critical judgment and uses our psychological needs to determine what the shape of reality is. Rational thinking in Pisces is frustrated.  Seeking psychological satisfaction is the determinant of what is upheld as real. For those on a spiritual or creative path, this is a wide-open opportunity to plunder the unconscious and clean it up, seeing what works. Without discretionary guidance, Neptune in Pisces is an invitation to go on a trip and believe what you see. What you will see is yourself, which is educational, to say the least. But if you are scrambled going in, what you get with Neptune in Pisces is scrambled too.

​When Neptune enters Aries next year the shift in our conscious Self will be dramatic

Neptune is the higher mind if one can tune it in, otherwise, it’s background noise.  Dreams still tell a story but out of Pisces they can be very hard to hear. This is a dramatic change of pace. Neptune indulgence is out as Saturn simultaneously leaves Pisces too, finding its footing out of the water and firmly on dry land. Saturn in Aries doesn’t take the time to explore fantasies: having finally seized the steering wheel away from Neptune it immediately brings reality into focus. 
The three major planets that escorted us through the last fifteen or more years to where we are now are all making big changes beginning with Pluto later this year, after a dramatic exit from Capricorn a few weeks after the delayed outcome of the US election. In late Winter, playing in the same symphony of planetary changes, Neptune leaves Pisces in April and Saturn leaves Pisces in May. They are virtually conjunct at this time. 

No need to launch a battleship

​There are a few Astrologers who refer to the advent of Saturn/Neptune into Aries as having a historical frequency of major wars erupting. Perhaps more so, with Uranus into Gemini in 2026.
We already know that Pluto leaving Capricorn and entering Aquarius was the tumult of the American War of Independence. When Neptune last entered Aries, in the 1860s, we had numerous wars in America including the Civil War and the Indian Wars. When Uranus, which moves more quickly than Pluto or Neptune, last entered Gemini, Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese. Here are the three major outer planets repeating transits in signs that previously brought evolution by conflict, by wars.
Call me an optimist, but I’m not sold on the outcome being a military war. However, I do recognize that war would very much and very quickly sober up the people who drowned in the Pisces Kool-Aid, a cosmic slap across the face to wake up, as Saturn and Neptune leave Pisces and enter the overtly more aggressive, more impatient Aries. There are other metaphorical battlefields we can wage a metaphorical war on. 

​With Pluto moving into Aquarius, it’s going to eventually bring down and rebuild our technology-based world. This can happen easily with targeted hacking or a solar flare that brings down segments of society very dependent on technology. No need to launch a battleship. This would fulfill the Aries landscape of keeping it simple, taking the rough and bumpy path to a remade technology, eventually, when Pluto forms a favorable trine with Uranus by the summer of next year. Aquarius is new technology, lightning fast, ruled by Uranus which when entering Gemini, brings frequent and rapid communication. Things will happen in the Spring of next year that might have taken months or years to happen generations ago, now will be condensed into weeks and months.
Uranus will enter Gemini and retrograde briefly back into Taurus to re-enter Gemini in 2026. This extends the nervousness and optimism into an entire year and a half. Uranus in Taurus is in a Fixed, Earth sign, which is to say, very stable and for a sky god chained to the ground, very subdued. When it gets into Air sign Gemini, the chains fall off and Uranus can throw its lightning bolts, its flashes of brilliance all over. The Earth will shake, remembering that lightning not only goes from the sky to the ground but from the ground to the sky. 

---

​The sequence of events begins with Pluto leaving Capricorn after one more dip in the pond. It enters Aquarius in the third week of November of this year. In April and May of 2025, we have what looks like a jolting transition from Pisces to Aries for Neptune and Saturn. Neptune begins this shift literally on April Fool’s Day. For most people, the confusion from Neptune’s shift is soon followed by an over-the-top breaking-out-of-jail reaction from Saturn, suddenly unshackled, probably in a bit of a panic. By early June, Jupiter is entering Cancer and forms a square to both Neptune and Saturn. Jupiter magnifies hopes contrasted with what’s not working yet; June will be awkward. By late June, Mars catches up to Jupiter and squares Neptune and Saturn. There will probably be anger around wishing we could put Humpty Dumpty together again, but the egg is broken and we can only go forward. Some things are lost. Both Mars and Jupiter as they square Neptune and Saturn make an inconjunct aspect to Pluto. This is the moment of decision from which there is no going back.
These challenges are meant to spur changes that otherwise might not happen. What’s upsetting is that in a short period of time, there is no choice but to embrace the necessary change. 

---

Ukraine

​Looking at some specific charts, as Saturn enters Aries in May of 2025 it forms a sextile to Ukraine’s natal Saturn. This is a period of restructuring. Whether this restructuring is an agreement, making one, or rebuilding damaged structure…... it’s happening now leading to/from the end of the war.  Either Ukraine is rebuilding, or the war is over and Russia is rebuilding in Ukraine. I expect the former.  Russia doesn’t have the resources to rebuild Ukraine or the acceptance to be welcome there.  Neptune’s sextile aspect to Ukraine’s natal Saturn suggests a positive diagnosis and humanitarian interest in healing, not just rebuilding.
More powerfully, Pluto by later next year transits into a conjunction with Ukraine’s natal Saturn. This is a major reconstruction in practical terms of infrastructure but also in deeper layers of the society and its government. Neither Pluto nor Saturn are warm and cuddly. It would be easy to see these two dismantling the structure of the government and having another one inserted, but this could be interpreted as winning or losing the war. I believe it is from the war ending, and Ukraine is independent of Russia.  Both Pluto and Saturn are ‘no frills’ in their reconstruction planning. They deal with the lowest common denominators and foundations upon which a future can be built. Pluto likes to start fresh and so it removes the existing foundation to build a new one. Saturn likes to keep things simple and focus on the essentials. I will have to look at Russia’s chart, perhaps they are also going to experience an internal rebirth.

Russia

​Vladimir Putin’s natal chart has a major opposition from transiting Uranus to his natal Mars. He is in this now and it doesn’t resolve itself until May of next year. The retrograde motion prolongs this action and deepens it too. One of the easiest ways to imagine how this opposition from Uranus to Mars manifests, is an irregular heartbeat. In April/May next year, transiting Saturn squares his natal Mars. Saturn definitely undermines his health/vitality at this time. Neptune began the same square aspect months earlier, suggesting he is being medicated incorrectly or deliberately. I’m not predicting his death, but after this, he may be bedridden and out of government. His removal from power would change the dynamics of the war in Europe. Because no one really knows Putin’s time of birth the best guess of Astrologers at large for a chart places Putin’s natal Mars in his second house. This implies that his ability to generate income and have resources to support his plans is suddenly cut off. His source of energy (Mars) has blown a fuse.
Russia has a looming problem with transiting Saturn next Spring, when Saturn arrives in early Aries and goes back and forth over that area for a year.  It will oppose Russia’s natal Saturn in Aries and square its natal Moon. This is severe austerity. The square to the Moon is sometimes called tough love, which Russia is a proud supporter of. This is internal pressure forcing an existence under the most difficult circumstances with a lot of self-denial. Denial of normal needs in life. Russia has proven it can do this. Not a problem. The Saturn opposite Saturn however means this isn’t under their control. Saturn often represses emotions, and in Russia’s case, the natal square between Saturn and the Moon means for them it’s normal. These aspects must simply mean they are doing it again.
Russia’s Descendant, opposite the Ascendant, is going to be conjuncted by transiting Uranus. In traditional Astrology, this often coincides with the breaking up of a relationship. For a nation, not a person, this could apply as Russia finally accepting that Ukraine doesn’t want to be married; it’s time to get the divorce. The exact timing on this is April-May next year, which is a potent time in the whole world.

USA

​In the chart of the USA, the Pluto return is still being felt. The peak of it has passed but we are in the shadow of Pluto now as it will by mid-December depart being an influence on the US natal Pluto, yet its work there will be overtly felt into next year. The progressed Pluto in the US chart (progressed from its birth to now) is 29 degrees of Capricorn. This repeats and emphasizes the scale of Pluto’s impact on the national psyche. The tumult in the national ID is projected from the people who make up the country through Pluto. Pluto itself is just a conduit for an internal process that is unfortunately necessary.
Just because Pluto moves on doesn’t mean that the problems it raised are gone. The problems have been here since the beginning and still are here. But like an election, the process is experienced nationally and a mandate emerges now as to our internal feelings about this long national obsession. Everything is out in the open. It will take several years of experience in another frame of mind, with other unconscious influences through Pluto, to give us some perspective on what we are still going through.
As Carl Jung remarked, while working on processing material that emerges from the unconscious to change our consciousness, the unconscious body is also changed, or reformed. It goes both ways.
Jupiter has in recent weeks conjuncted the US natal Mars, an uplifting hopeful positive period. This will last through the year as Jupiter turns retrograde and extends this period of positive optimism. Further into next year, after Jupiter enters Cancer mid-summer, it will conjunct in succession:  the US natal Venus, Sun, Jupiter and Mercury. There will be an extended period of positivism expansion and growth injected into the nation through the Spring of 2026 just from this alone. Constructive things are going to happen with this influence. These Jupiter aspects are all attitude-shaping. They help set up an attitude of feeling positive about life. This attitude produces its own luck; things seem to work. It doesn’t mean the world is perfect. It’s a vitamin to optimism that in spite of everything, we are confident and know what we have to do. Jupiter can convince everyone that things are all going to be fine and this attitude makes it so. The downside to Jupiter transits like this is feeling so positive that we don’t make the effort that’s required while opportunity passes. I don’t think that will happen. The fast pace of events in the world will bring pressure to improve the quality of life.
The clock is ticking. 

A quick look at some other charts:

NORTH KOREA:  I notice that when Saturn then Neptune enter Aries beginning in Spring of 2025, they are going to square the placement of Uranus in North Korea’s natal chart and will be trine its natal Venus and Moon. This is a sudden event, maybe a more serious missile launch or accident.  Strict judgments from Saturn and from Neptune later on come as a strong challenge to their government’s delusions, in a benevolent form. Perhaps they receive some form of aid from someone they consider an opponent, though they might refuse it.

DONALD TRUMP:  Saturn currently is squaring Donald Trump’s natal Uranus and Sun. It was doing this earlier this summer and will be doing it again later in the season and into next year. That’s literally bad luck for campaign season. Squaring Uranus makes him more erratic, going in multiple directions at once with his word salads costing him credibility.
The square aspects (to the natal 10th house Sun and Uranus from 8th house transits of Saturn and Neptune) suggest he is depressed and his energy is low, and he will have to liquidate investments from his past to pay in the present. His ability to invent distracting excuses will fail to get him out of trouble. Uranus can invent, but Saturn doesn’t do nonsense. Neptune, which will take longer to finish with the square on his natal Sun and Uranus, is going to continue to scramble his ability to focus and sort out his fabrications from reality. He could be diagnosed (Neptune) with a degenerative brain (Uranus) disorder.
Right now through December, Uranus in transit is semi-sextile Trump’s Sun and Uranus (stresses) and sextile his Saturn and Venus (supportive). There is some positive in that. But Uranus is very much square his 12th house Mars. The square is friction, frustration, impatience…. unsteady or fluctuating energy. Over the period of three to four months, the square aspect brings erratic swings in energy, low-performance periods being not helpful in a campaign season.
Saturn will inconjunct his natal 2nd house Jupiter next year, late Winter. Tough decisions that negatively affect his financial worth will be made.
In late Winter 2026, Saturn moving along in Aries will oppose Trump’s natal Neptune. This is corrosive acid on his made-up version of reality, his Neptunian dream world. His natal Neptune is in his 2nd house of material acumen so expect that his fortunes are revealed to be far less than stated and will be reduced even more by unavoidable costs and penalties.

KAMALA HARRIS:  Kamala Harris's chart doesn’t have any oppositions or squares from the movements of Saturn and Neptune from late Pisces into Aries. She does have an inconjunct and a semi-sextile, so there are some stresses on her in regards to having to make difficult decisions around late Winter or early Spring and then as Saturn and Neptune go back and forth in this area for over a year she will continue to face a big responsibility from these decisions. Whatever is happening isn’t caused by her but she has to deal with it. Saturn and Neptune moving into Aries next year will be semi-sextile her natal 9th house Saturn. This suggests an irritating responsibility that there is no escape from. Probably an obligation that comes with her day job.
At the moment, Uranus is still conjuncting her natal 12th house Jupiter. This is her challenge, to respond to the sudden catapulting into the presidential race. Is she karmically and psychologically prepared for this? It appears that so far she has answered the call very well. Uranus is also square her natal 3rd house Mars, suggesting a need for caution in her words because she can’t charm people while talking like the prosecutor she once was. Fortunately, Uranus is also trine her natal 4th house Uranus/Venus, and from there she can bring the charms of a mature woman with the intuitive gift of timing, knowing when to speak as a prosecutor and inspirational leader.
Kamala will have a square from transiting Pluto as it enters Aquarius, in fact it’s effective even now. The Pluto square from her 8th house is squaring her natal Sun and Mercury in her 5th house. This is something from her past being brought out to use against her this election season. While she may not be prevented from winning an election because of it, this issue won’t go away for a year or so. Because it’s 5th house it might concern her children, something they said or an affair that involves them. Because it’s Pluto doing it, there may be something “dark” or negative that is imagined can be used against her. 

David can be reached at [email protected] for a personal astrological consultation.
Click here to return to the Astrology Corner index page.