New Moon in Aquarius – Jan. 21, 2023, 20:53 UT
Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF). Image by Edu INAF
This New Moon in early Aquarius conjunct Pluto is an extreme supermoon, although the Moon is invisible, as it always is at the New Moon. The Sun and the Moon are in conjunction and the luminaries are in line with Earth. The Moon’s orbit around Earth is elliptical, and last time the Moon was this close to us was in 1030.
Instead of the Moon you may be able to see a rare visitor, the green comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) which is now passing through the inner solar system and should be visible if not with bare eyes at least with binoculars. Its closest approach to Earth will be on Feb. 1, 2023. It hasn’t been seen from Earth in about 50,000 years and it won’t be back in millions of years. In the chart comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) is now at 21+ degrees of Libra. It is moving clockwise through the zodiac, in the opposite direction than the planets, and at the Full Moon on Feb. 5, 2023, it will be at 22+ degrees of Gemini.
The Sun conjoined Pluto on Jan. 18 in late Capricorn and entered Aquarius on Jan. 20. Pluto is about to start its slow ingress into Aquarius. We are on the threshold of a new era. Pluto enters Aquarius for the first time on March 23, 2023. Pluto returns into Capricorn in June 2023, makes the second enter into Aquarius in January 2024, goes back to Capricorn once again in September 2024, and then in November 2024 enters Aquarius the third and the last time on this round. Pluto’s orbit around the Sun takes 248 years.
Pluto was discovered in 1930 and its companion Charon in 1978. Pluto-Charon is the first known trans-neptunian binary object and the largest of the binary systems in the solar system. The barycenter of the Plutonian system lies in the space between both bodies, and the four small moons (Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra) orbit not just Pluto but Charon as well.
Already before Pluto’s astronomical binary status was known, its dual nature was obvious to astrologers. The first book published on Pluto was in 1934 by a German astrologer Fritz Brunhübner (1894 – 1965), who wrote:
“Just as the two luminaries form a polarity, so Pluto, too, is a polarity – a duality – seeking union or blending into singleness. Pluto is the ‘die and be’ of Goethe; it is death and rebirth; Pluto kills or destroys but builds out of the elements of the destroyed – out of the old, something new; Pluto rises from the ashes like the phoenix. Pluto is transformations…”
Brunhübner even thought that the mythology of the god Janus had better represented the characteristics of Pluto, and the name Janus would have been more fitting. In Roman mythology Janus was the god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, frames, and endings. He is usually depicted as having two faces.
American astrologer Isabel M. Hickey (1903 – 1980) published “Pluto or Minerva: The Choice is Yours” in 1973. She wrote: “There is a very negative side to Pluto. That side is as low as its higher aspect is high. When mob rule takes over, the negative side of this energy causes individuals to act far more viciously than any one of them would act by himself.” She also wrote: “The dark forces use the Pluto force destructively and thereby bring on their own destruction. It takes strength to be a devil. Most of what we call evil is ignorance. Organized evil is beyond the comprehension of the average person. The forces of Light and their work is just as little understood. Always and all ways we can choose which is right for us.”