Welcome to our first installment of a monthly series on Pluto generations! Last month I did an introduction to Pluto as a generational signifier and how to interpret it in a natal chart.
This month we will look at the oldest Pluto cohort still with us — the Pluto in Cancer generation. Born from approximately 1914-1939, this generation includes about half of what demographers categorize as of the Greatest Generation, born roughly 1901-1927, and the first part of the Silent Generation, born 1925-1945.
(Note that Pluto can go back and forth between two signs around the time that it changes signs, so any birth charts within a couple years on either end of a Pluto generation range should be double checked for Pluto’s exact placement.)
This Pluto generation is one marked by great upheavals, not to mention the discovery of Pluto itself in 1930, at the dawn of the atomic age. The earliest members of this Pluto cohort were born just as World War I engulfed much of the globe, followed by the worldwide influenza pandemic of 1918. 1929 saw the stock market crash in the US and the Great Depression that followed in the 1930s, alongside the rise of fascism and the lead up to World War II.
The era also saw progress in women’s rights through the suffragist movement, and a revolution in industrial food production through the introduction of canned, frozen, and processed food that changed the relationship people had with food, and the way that food was prepared in the home.
As astrologer Patrick Watson has pointed out, “Pluto is a planet of extremes, making big things small and small things big.” Pluto shows us how generations are oriented, what issues matter to them, and what events shape their lives. But Pluto also shows how these notions can be corrupted, where they're taken too far.
Pluto in Cancer: Corruption of Home, Family, Mother, Memory
Ruled by the moon, Pluto in Cancer finds itself in a feminine cardinal water sign oriented around initiating things and driven by emotions, often deeply tied into the past, home, and nostalgia. For this generation, notions of home, homeland, family, and the past became symbols that were fought and died for, through two world wars that radically transformed global powers.
It’s safe to say that most, if not all, of the people born under Pluto in Cancer had their lives affected in some way, if not upended entirely, by notions of the homeland. Many of these ideas around homeland became distorted, particularly during World War II, which this generation faced as a pivotal event in their lives, and for which many of them gave their lives, on different sides of the conflict.
Cancer is feminine sign in which the moon has its domicile, and which symbolizes the archetype of motherhood. As such, Pluto in Cancer also indicates societal transformation in the role of women in society. And transformation in the rights and roles of women, and mothers, did indeed occur during this era, both in politics, through the passage of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote in 1919 (anyone still find that astonishing, how late women gained the right to vote in the US??) and in the domestic sphere.
I remember interviewing my Pluto in Cancer grandmother for an elementary school project. She described the point in her childhood when her family switched from an ice box, with daily deliveries of ice on a wagon, which the neighborhood children followed around in hopes of catching slivers of ice to suck on, to a refrigerator. No longer did they have to buy fresh food each day and consume it before the ice melted in the ice box.
It’s hard to overstate what a change this was, effectively upending the way that food storage had been managed for most of human history. Canned and frozen food also added to the options for food storage and helped to transform the daily preparation of food and how it was carried out — and at that point in time, food preparation at home was done primarily by women.
But, just as ideas of home and homeland distorted worldwide events into two world wars, cancerian notions of the idealized feminine also contributed to a romanticized image of the mother and her place in the home that limited women’s options in life, as distorted through the lens of Pluto.
Home, food, the domestic sphere — all of these ideas seem to have been almost fetishized by this generation, many of whom grew up experiencing the deprivation of the Great Depression.
I remember my other Pluto in Cancer grandmother and her huge and extremely (insanely?) organized pantry, her freezer in the garage, always filled with frozen bounty from her and my grandpa’s garden and venison from my grandpa and uncle’s hunting trips. There would never be hunger in their house. They had both grown up with hunger as a threat, and now would do everything they could to keep it at bay.
Cancer has a tendency to hoard — memories, emotions, and momentos. People with strong Cancer signatures in their charts often have hoarding tendencies, even if just in the emotional realm (Cancer’s moody reputation gives a clue as to why this may be — there’s just a lot of emotions going on).
Furthermore, growing up and experiencing some type of deprivation, as happened for many during the Great Depression and the food rationing during the war years, can lead to hoarding later on, even (or especially) during times of bounty.
Letting go — of the past, of things they no longer need, of old emotions or grudges, can be hard for cancerian types, and this can be seen, in my experience, with people of this generation.
Artistically and culturally, this Pluto generation was born during the years that cinema and filmmaking expanded into a popular art form, a storytelling and entertainment format that arguably has transformed the way we as humans consume and tell stories. Many of this generational cohort grew up going to the movies, imbuing their earliest memories with the collective nostalgia of our shared stories on the big screen.
The music associated with this era, and with those born under Pluto in Cancer, is today referred to, appropriately, as “oldies.” This type of music is often sentimental and nostalgic, seemingly searching for a past that never existed. What better avatar of Pluto in Cancer’s emotional and imaginative artistic streak than Frank Sinatra, born in December of 1915, at the start of Pluto in Cancer.
A magnetic Sagittarius sun with a charming Libra rising and an imaginative Pisces moon, Sinatra had Pluto in Cancer in his tenth house of career in a close trine with that expressive Pisces moon and opposite Venus in Capricorn. His expressive artistry was tied into his generational cohort and he emerged as a kind of bard of this generation later on, with an enduring and timeless appeal even today. (Put a pin in his Venus in Capricorn for next week’s column on this placement — he’s a great example.)
If you still have any Pluto in Cancer elders in your life, check in with them and honor them for what they went through during their lives, or honor their memory if they’re not with us anymore.
Here’s Old Blue Eyes (in black and white, sadly) with Fly Me to the Moon, an appropriately sentimental cancerian anthem with some great astrological references: