Welcome to Part 5 of my series on the Pluto generations of those living today! In case you missed the previous installments, be sure to check them out: Intro to Pluto, Part 1: Pluto in Cancer, Part 2: Pluto in Leo, Part 3: Pluto in Virgo, and Part 4: Pluto in Libra.
“Live without your sunlight, love without your heartbeat. . .”
— Jareth the Goblin King (David Bowie), Labyrinth (1986)
We’re going emo in this month’s installment, since no one does emo better than Pluto in Scorpios!
We’ve now arrived at the generational cohort widely believed to be the largest group of adults alive today, the Millennials, also known as Gen Y, who demographers identify as being born between 1980 and 1994.
Unlike some of the earlier Pluto cohorts we’ve looked at, which sometimes don’t align exactly with the generational divisions of demographers, this one lines up pretty well with the Pluto in Scorpio years (born 1983-1995)1.
Knives Out
Like its symbol of the scorpion, which incorporates its armor and weapon into its body, Pluto in Scorpio faces life armed and dangerous. Ruled by Mars, this fixed water sign is strategic and cautious, watching and waiting in the shadows until the right moment to attack.
Pluto, which distorts and corrupts, has a particular affinity with Scorpio, and was even assigned as the ruler of Scorpio by modern astrologers. I use traditional rulerships which don’t include the modern planets Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, but I acknowledge Pluto’s power in Scorpio.
Pluto empowers and shows how power is expressed. For Pluto in Scorpio, power is expressed through existential struggle.
This generation was born in the twilight of the Cold War, whose reverberations continue to violently echo today, under constant threat of nuclear war. Their childhoods were dominated by this backdrop of existential doom, along with a potpourri of fearsome and disturbing events.
The AIDS crisis, which began under the last “plague signature” conjunction of Saturn and Pluto in Libra in the early 1980s (the most recent conjunction of these two planets occurred in early 2020 in Capricorn and coincided with Covid-19), expanded into a global health crisis during the Pluto in Scorpio years, with HIV the leading cause of death among Americans ages 25-44 by the early 1990s.
And then there was the “satanic panic” of the 80s and early 90s, in which over 12,000 unsubstantiated cases of so-called satanic ritual abuse of children were reported. “Stranger danger” and fear of child kidnapping and abuse, whether real or imagined, followed this cohort through their childhoods, with their “helicopter parents” curtailing free range fun in favor of structured playdates and after school activities.
It’s worth noting that many (though certainly not all) Pluto in Scorpios have Baby Boomer parents with Pluto in Leo, many of whom had children later in life. Thanks to the revolution in family planning, brought about during the Pluto in Virgo years in the 1960s, as well as the widespread entry of women into the workplace and the resulting delay in having children, the Pluto in Scorpio generation is perhaps the first one to have many of its parents born with a Pluto sign square to their own.
Thus, we see a generational cohort sometimes at odds with many of their parental figures, along two stubborn fixed signs (Leo and Scorpio), to boot.
Martial and Dark Arts
The Pluto in Scorpio era began with The Karate Kid (1984), in which a bullied teen is taken under the wing of a martial arts master and eventually gets revenge on his bullies at the aptly named Cobra Kai dojo, and ended just before the publication of the first Harry Potter book (1997).
The Harry Potter series went on to become catnip for this generation, particularly the younger members, who famously dressed up as witches and wizards to wait in line for hours to get the latest book in the saga about a bullied boy locked in an existential struggle against an embodiment of pure evil.
Anyone see a pattern here?
Of course, one of Pluto in Scorpio’s signature traits, again, like its scorpion symbol, is to sting the hand that reaches out. The child witches and wizards grew up and eventually turned on She Who Must Not Be Named, the author of the books that had animated their childhoods in a suitably scorpionic manner (Scorpio has an affinity with the occult), in a pattern that has repeated itself in recent years in so-called cancel culture.
(And here, I feel that I must point out that I’m describing a dynamic, not endorsing it. I support trans people. Also, The Karate Kid and its spinoffs traffic in Asian stereotypes. I found this article, about one Asian-American’s complex relationship to this story, illuminating. Don’t come for me, Pluto in Scorpios. Sincerely, your cool older sister, Pluto in Libra.)
Endless War
This is, lest we forget, the generation that came of age in the aftermath of 9/11 and the subsequent declaration of war on a feeling of dread.
While the attacks of 9/11 were executed during the early Pluto in Sagittarius years, when Pluto turned Sagittarius’ religious zeal deadly, it was largely the Pluto in Scorpio generation, as young adults, that has borne the brunt of fighting in the endless wars hatched over the last two decades.
As we know, tragically, many of those who served came back traumatized with wounds both physical and emotional.
Time and again, this generation has seemed to get the short end of the stick, arriving at critical life milestones just as the institutional supports that previous generations took for granted evaporated.
From the economic crash of 2008, just as many in this cohort were trying to enter the job market or buy homes, to the explosion of student debt, which shadows this generation, to the timing of the Covid pandemic, when many were starting to have children, this group has had the rug pulled out from under it over and over.
Apocalyptic Toughness
There is, however, a potential upside to all of this existential challenge: this generation is tough as nails.
The Covid-19 pandemic has shown their resilience, as this cohort (aged approximately 25-37 at the start of the pandemic) filled many of the essential worker roles, the health care providers, teachers, and all the others, who stepped up to the plate and did what needed to be done.
Pluto in Scorpio does what needs to be done, even if it’s tough, dirty work.
Indeed, the other Pluto generations would do well to stop complaining about Millennials and make nice with them: our survival, particularly during the upcoming Pluto in Aquarius transit (beginning in 2023!), when this group will experience their Pluto square — a challenging rite of passage into mid-life — may depend on them.
Swords Into Ploughshares
As we discussed in last month’s installment, each Pluto generation reflects a yearning towards its opposite sign, in this case the mellow Venus-ruled earth sign of Taurus.
Let’s face it: it’s exhausting to go through life on constant defensive offense.
A permanent state of existential struggle leads to burnout. I found it interesting that during the pandemic so many younger adults (read: Millennials) were collectively saying peace out, quitting draining jobs, and moving to the country. The wounded warriors were heading into less stressful environments where they could contemplate a venusian peace and quiet in Taurus’ fertile fields.
Poker Face
This generational cohort counts among its members a plethora of celebrity dynamos, many of them known for their resilience: Daniel Radcliffe (and the rest of the Harry Potter films gang), Kristen Steward, Keira Knightly, Scarlett Johansson, Lindsay Lohan, Elliot Page, Miley Cyrus, Olivia Wilde, Zac Efron, Robert Pattinson, Rihanna, Adele, Katy Perry, Jennifer Lawrence, Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Mark Zuckerberg, and Lady Gaga.
The last time Pluto was in Scorpio, in the early-mid 18th-century, brought us, to name just a small sampling, the American revolutionaries Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine, Haitian general and revolutionary Toussaint L’Ouverture, French revolutionary Jean Paul Marat, French writer and libertine Marquis de Sade, German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Spanish painter Francisco Goya, known for his powerful, sometimes disturbing imagery.
As Lady Gaga (born 1986, a Mars-ruled Aires sun with a Jill-of-all-trades Gemini rising and a potent Scorpio moon conjunct Pluto) seems to be pointing out in her hit song Poker Face, this is a generation that can be hard to read, preferring to play their cards close to their chests.
Stay tough, Pluto in Scorpios! (Or not. . . Maybe go on vacation?)
If you’re looking at a birth date on either edge of this range, be sure to double check Pluto’s placement using an ephemeris or by generating your birth chart, since Pluto can move back and forth a bit between signs when changing from one to the next.