Feb 2024
Odd Bird
Are you a non-Aquarius who finds herself intrigued by this odd bird of a sign? There’s a lot of it in the sky right now, so this is our chance to get better acquainted with its wavelength. Aquarius is often brilliant, sometimes opaquely baffling, and never less than fascinating.
And if you have Aquarius in your own chart, be sure to celebrate your uniqueness while February’s transits are buzzing above.
New Moon
On Feb 9th, the Moon is New at the 21st degree of Aquarius, marking out the themes of the four weeks to come.
This is the most mental sign of the most mental element. Good timing for the study and practice of science — not necessarily in the modern sense of the word, but in its original sense, scientia (Latin): knowledge acquired through collective experience.
At its highest, Aquarian intelligence is able to grasp extremely abstract principles without interference from personal prejudice. This is why it’s associated with astrology, a meaning system based on geometrical principles. Just numbers, in all their sacred purity. Astrology reveals our impulses stripped of all the subjective stuff.
This isn’t to dismiss the usefulness of what might be called applied astrology: how transits apply to the personality and everyday matters. But ultimately, holistic models like astrology are not personal. They raise the impersonal to an art form. To grasp them, we have to turn down the volume of sensation, feelings and ruminations. What’s left are raw concepts, in their essential form.
So what happens when emotional planets are passing through this crisp, intellectual sign?
Odd bird
Where feelings and needs (Venus, Moon) are concerned, our best bet this month is to capitalize on the refreshing detachment now available.
Distance promotes clarity. Consider how much benefit we derive, every once in a while, from copping a slight remove from our most deeply subjective impulses. It gives us the space to identify long-held viewpoints that may be smothering our perspective.
Think about any relationships you might have that are so close they make you myopic. Or longstanding behavioral patterns, whose meanings have become reduced, through sheer force of habit, to your seeing them as “problems” and nothing more.
Try subjecting these issues to the objectivity offered up by this month’s transits. It will feel like opening a window in a closed room.
Pluto in Aqua
The star of the Aquarian show this month – not to mention, for the next two decades — is Pluto, the god of death/ rebirth. It’s still hovering around the sign’s first degree. The Sun, which stays in Aquarius until 2/19, met up with Pluto in January, putting the spotlight on the whole Pluto-in-Aquarius era.
On a collective level, it’s clear that the world has taken an Aquarian turn. Not to put too fine a point on it, the cyber revolution has altered the way humans understand reality. We have entered the Age of the Algorithm, about which there’s a lot of fraught, ambivalent discussion.
Our social institutions and mores are morphing radically and constantly. Age-old constructs like the material economy and physical property are giving way to the attention economy and intellectual property. Geopolitical empires are giving way to digital empires. If Pluto in Capricorn forced us to confront global plutocracy, Pluto in Aquarius is going to force us to manage global technocracy.
And it’s all happening so fast, the mass mind can be forgiven for having trouble catching up.
Kissing the ring
This month we will confront Pluto in Aquarius on the level of personality, as the inner planets jump into the fray. Per impeccable cosmic timing, we will be guided through the steps, as we get used to the new mass vibe. 
To prepare for getting on board, certain old approaches will have to be released. As each of the inner planets ingress in turn, they will have to kiss Pluto’s ring. Each part of our psyche will require its own form of letting go. Mercury enters Aquarius on the 4th, Mars on the 12th and Venus on the 16th.
Wherever zero-to-one degree of Aquarius falls in your natal chart is where you’re being asked to bow to the inexorable power of the dark god. Something is dying. It could be an opinion (Mercury), a behavior (Mars), a relationship (Venus), an environmental circumstance.
If you don’t read your own chart, get a reading. The goal here is to identify — to become consciously aware of — what needs to change. This makes it much easier to gracefully let go. It does not have to be painful; not if we don’t resist.
Pluto has no interest in making us suffer. It just wants us to drop the tired old nonsense.
Hidden truths
Naming what needs to be released here isn’t really that difficult, because Pluto transits are so visceral. When we eat bad food that makes us nauseous, bodily instinct tells us it’s time to vomit. The same is true on an energy level, when we ingest something that’s past its prime. It may be the very thing we least want to change, but we probably know what it is.
Detoxifying can be uncomfortable, but when we view the situation with Aquarian distance, we see how necessary it is.