The 2020s: The Astrology of the Decade

It’s that time of year where astrologers are sharing their year-ahead forecasts. I’m working on one as well, however first I wanted to take a step back and look at the 2020s as a whole.

I recently presented a lecture on this – a look at the 2020s as well as a 2025 year-ahead forecast – to the Edmonton Astrological Society. If you prefer to listen/watch things instead of read them, I recommend you check it out. You can purchase it here for only $10 CAD.

Knowing the main astrological transits for broad stretches of time is critically important when doing both natal and mundane astrology. It’s so easy to get lost in the details. This bigger picture helps you center and focus when you get stuck in the weeds.

By “main astrological transits” I’m referring to the movements of the outer planets: Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. Transits refer to their ingresses into new signs as well as their major aspects with each another. These events bring headline news, quite literally – once you become aware of these transits, you can start easily picking out which news stories correspond to them.

Forecast anxiety is a real thing. But being forewarned is being forearmed, and it’s very helpful to get a sense of what’s coming and how long it will last. There’s always something else just around the corner. True, when you see a lot of big things happening in rapid succession – like in 2020 and 2025 – it can be nerve-wracking. But nothing lasts forever.

Also, as far as the 2020s go, it’s really hard to overstate just how bad the astrology of 2020 was. It was so bad. It might actually be the worst astrology we experience in our lifetime. But we’ve done that, we survived, and the rest of the 2020s won’t feel nearly as oppressive and heavy as those early years were.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Here are the main astrological events of the 2020s with their corresponding dates:

Just looking at those dates, you can see that 2025 really is the halftime show of the decade. Not only is it chronologically in the middle of the 2020s, it’s also got several major astrology events. It really is a turning point for the decade: the first half and the second half are going to be radically different from one another.

If you’re unfamiliar with mundane astrology, I’ve written some introductory articles on it:

Learning the Basics of Mundane Astrology

The Meaning of the Planets in Mundane Astrology

The Meaning of the Houses in Mundane Astrology

The Meaning of the Signs in Mundane Astrology

Let’s examine the Saturn-Pluto conjunction in more detail. First, you need to know the meaning of these planets in mundane astrology.

Saturn represents:

• Structures
• Boundaries
• Materiality/physical stuff: land, natural resources, and all the people who work with these things (farmers, oil workers, miners, etc.)
• Division and definition; Saturn likes to divide things up, stick them in boxes and label them
• Elderly people
• Death
• Disease
• Pessimism
• Endurance

Saturn is not fun. He’s the greater malefic. But we need Saturn: he brings structure and order to our world. So as much as we may struggle with Saturn’s lessons, he is necessary.

In mundane astrology, Pluto represents:

• Destruction
• Resurrection
• Transformation
• Exploitation
• Power struggles
• Violence
• Corruption

Just looking at their meanings alone, it’s not hard to see that when you combine Saturn and Pluto, it’s a challenging time. Saturn and Pluto conjoin every 33 to 38 years, marking a new chapter of world history. The period around the exact conjunction is always difficult, as the world struggles to learn the new Saturn lessons – which are often attended by a lot of immediate restriction and oppression – and to release the old cycles and move into a new one (the Plutonian transformation cycle of destruction and resurrection).

Put simply, they bring the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: war, disease, famine, death.

Previous Saturn-Pluto conjunctions occurred on the following dates:

• 1914-15 in Cancer:
  • World War I.
• 1947 in Leo:
  • New world order and post-World War II recovery.
  • Beginning of McCarthyism with the House of Un-American Activities (a Hollywood blacklist for people with supposed communist ties).
  • Severe famine in the Soviet Union.
• 1982 in Libra:
  • Widespread economic crises around the world.
  • Severe recession, stagflation (high unemployment and high inflation), double-digit interest rates.
• 2020 in Capricorn:
  • COVID pandemic.

The 2020 Saturn-Pluto conjunction was on January 12, 2020 at 22 Capricorn, and we all know what it brought. The COVID pandemic was a very literal manifestation of Saturn representing disease and death, and Pluto representing destruction and power struggles. The lockdowns and rules in response to the pandemic were very literal examples of Saturnian restriction and oppression, not to mention division and boundaries.

Pluto brought revelations of the corruption at the heart of all our key societal institutions – government, education, military, healthcare. Pluto dug up the rot that had previously been buried and exposed it for all to see.

The 2020 Saturn-Pluto conjunction occurred in Capricorn, a sign ruled by Saturn, so the Saturn energy was really amped up for that one. It’s partially why that one was so intense and heavy. There were other factors as well though – exalted Mars, fallen Jupiter and the South Node were also in Capricorn at that time. There was an eclipse just two days prior to the exact conjunction. It really was a period of hopelessness and tyranny.

After the Saturn-Pluto conjunction in January 2020, Saturn continued moving quickly through Capricorn and ingressed Aquarius on March 21, 2020. That put Saturn immediately into a square with Uranus in Taurus. The Saturn-Uranus square lasted throughout the second half of 2020 through 2022, finally ending with Saturn’s ingress to Pisces on March 7, 2023.

Saturn rules Aquarius too, so Saturn continued to have a lot of strength to do what Saturn does best. March 2020 was when the COVID lockdowns swept through most of the world. Where Capricorn represents our institutional structures, Aquarius represents our social structures – the various types of organizing into groups.  Harsh restrictions around how, where and why people can gather together is a very literal example of Saturn in Aquarius.

Throughout the period from 2020 through to early 2023, Saturn exerted restrictive and oppressive control. He divided people up into categories with rigid boundaries and was intolerant about breaking those boundaries.

Simultaneously, Uranus constantly challenged Saturn’s authority. In mundane astrology, Uranus represents:

• Revolution
• Rebellion
• Liberation
• Disruption
• Chaos
• Innovation
• Individualism

From late 2020 until early 2023, we saw a constant push-pull of Saturn’s rules being implemented and then challenged by Uranian disruption and rebellion. This included people being divided up by COVID measures, such as pitting people against each other based on their vaccination status and implementing measures like vaccine passports and other rules that strictly governed who can enter certain spaces or cross certain borders. This reached a peak with the trucker convoy in Canada in January-February 2022 (which was also when transiting Saturn exactly squared Canada’s natal Pluto).

There was also division along racial lines, which was certainly not new to this era but which came to a head with the George Floyd protests that started in May 2020. This sparked a wave of civil unrest throughout 2020 and into 2021.

“These are the rules, follow them or be punished severely,” said Saturn. “Fuck your rules, I must be free,” responded Uranus.

As we moved into 2023 and 2024, things shifted considerably. Saturn moved into the murky waters of Pisces on March 7, 2023, where he lacks any dignity to accomplish all those things he brought us in the early 2020s. Almost at the same time, Pluto made its first ingress into Aquarius on March 23, 2023. Uranus and Neptune remained in the last parts of Taurus and Pisces, respectively.

This brought us our first taste of the cyberpunk, Age of Air future that’s in store for the next 20 years. Aquarius is still a Saturn-ruled sign, and therefore often rigid and inflexible, but much less consolidated. Instead of a single behemoth to contend with, the energy scatters into a dizzying number of different avenues to wander down.

Almost as soon as Pluto had entered Aquarius, the conversation around Artificial Intelligence blew up and suddenly everyone was talking about it. Just after Pluto’s final ingress into Aquarius on November 19, 2024, we got mysterious drone sightings being reported all over social media. We are just getting started: headlines like this will be commonplace for the next 20 years.

Pluto will slowly and systematically tear down the Aquarian outposts over the next 20 years, a backdrop of slow but ceaseless crusade towards an as-yet unknown future state of interrelation between man and machine, terrestrial and extraterrestrial.

Looking back on 2024, it really did have the sense of a period on the brink of major change. There was a sense of anticipation as well as stagnancy. We all felt the massive change coming but we knew it wasn’t there just yet. There was an impatience restlessness. It was a year that was the moment’s pause after inhalation and before exhalation. It was a year that stood on the brink, but didn’t quite step over the edge.

2025 steps over the edge immediately and brings several major shifts in relatively short succession. Pluto has newly ingressed Aquarius, where it will be for the next 20 years. Saturn and Neptune will make their first ingress into Aries in the first half of 2025. Not to be outdone, Uranus will finally exit the fertile fields of Taurus and enter the cerebral realm of Gemini, where it will form an immediate trine with Pluto in Aquarius. This trine between Pluto and Uranus will be in effect throughout the latter half of the 2020s, from 2025 through 2029.

This is a lot of competing energies and forces suddenly coming into play all at once, at the midway point of the decade. Let’s look at the Saturn-Neptune conjunction first.

In mundane astrology, Neptune represents:

• The imaginal/transcendent/immaterial realm
• Dreams
• Visions
• Illusion
• Delusion
• Spiritual groups and cults
• Drugs
• Collectives

Neptune brings dreams and hopes, delusions and illusions. It’s the pulsing psychedelic fractals that you see on the inside of your eyelids after consuming too many substances; after engaging in deep meditation; after pushing your body to physical, mental and spiritual extremes. Neptune’s visions are ephemeral, tantalizing and horrifying in turn.

Trudging alongside, Saturn struggles to sort out which of Neptune’s visions are the truth to use as the foundation for his future structures. Yet each time Saturn tries to grab one of these phantoms and begin the laborious process of staking out the boundaries, laying planks, pouring concrete – the bottom dissolves and things plunge back into chaos and unrealized potential. The process begins again.

Saturn is the planet most rooted in the material world. Saturn IS the material world. Meanwhile, Neptune is the planet most outside materiality. To say these two are at odds is an understatement. On a fundamental level, Saturn and Neptune represent two extreme differences that are difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile.

Some of the keywords for the Saturn-Neptune conjunction are:

• Turning fantasies into reality.
• Imagining new collective structures.
• Blending the material with the immaterial.
• Disillusionment at the inability to manifest dreams.

Previous examples of Saturn-Neptune conjunctions occurred on the following dates:

• 1989 in Capricorn:
  • Beginning of the end of the Soviet Union.
  • Redrawn national borders.
  • Ideologically-motivated civil unrest (Tiananmen Square).
• 1952-53 in Libra:
  • New monarchy (Queen Elizabeth II).
  • Ideological clashes (Red Scare/McCarythism).
  • Scientific discoveries and innovations (first polio vaccine).
• 1917 in Leo:
  • Redrawn national borders, post-WWI.

So, as we move into the middle part of the decade, we are approaching an astrological birthday of sorts. Saturn and Neptune dance together throughout 2025 in preparation for their conjunction at 0 Aries, the beginning of the zodiac, on February 20, 2026.

The longest-lasting astrological aspect of the decade is Uranus in Gemini trine Pluto in Aquarius, which extends from 2025 through 2029.

The Uranus-trine-Pluto cycle is erratic and occurs at irregular intervals. These periods are very dynamic and full of rapid change. Because it’s a trine aspect, it tends to be more productive in the sense that these planets are cooperating and working together to manifest each of their agendas. They will collaborate on the invention of new exotic technology on the level of both human and non-human alike. They promise great innovation, disruption, destruction, revolution and evolution.

There are periods where you get revolutions and rebellions; power plays; radical social and political movements; technological advances and scientific breakthroughs.

Here are previous examples of Uranus trine Pluto:

• 1920-24, Uranus in Pisces trine Pluto in Cancer:
  • Roaring Twenties, a period of rapid social and scientific change.
  • Many new forms of technology became commonplace: cars, radio, film, electricity in the home – things that were rare and exotic (or nonexistent) only a few years prior.
  • Expansion and contraction of human rights: increased rights for women and racial minorities; decreased rights for immigrants; Prohibition of liquor in the US.
• 1883-86, Uranus in Virgo/Libra trine Pluto in Taurus/Gemini:
  • Height of Second Industrial Revolution.
  • Huge number of scientific developments including electric lighting, mass transit and telecommunications.
• 1809-12, Uranus in Scorpio trine Pluto in Pisces:
  • Wars of independence (Spanish-American).
  • Nations declaring independence from Spain (Colombia, Chile, Paraguay, Venezuela).
  • War of 1812 between Britain and the US.
  • Luddite riots: strong rejection of new technology (people literally smashing industrial machines); followed by legislation to protect machines/technology.

So, for the latter part of the 2020s I’m expecting some radical technological and scientific advances and developments. These will be on the same level as what happened in the 1920s: tech that seemed super futuristic only a few years earlier, but which will quickly become part of everyday life. AI will be one of these developments, though probably not in its current form.

At the same time, I think we will also see a rejection of technology as well as laws put in place to protect technology and machine. This may be a time period when AI gains rights, which should be a very interesting development that challenges the very concept of “human” rights on a fundamental level.

There may also be a general social trend where people consciously choose to limit their engagement with technology, a sort of return to tradition that we’re already seeing. Overlaid with the Saturn-Neptune conjunction, we also may see some new religious movements or even cults form around both technology and the rejection of technology. Personally, I’m both excited and nervous to meet robot Jesus.

Moving into 2028 and 2029, we get the opening square of the current Saturn-Pluto cycle that started with their conjunction in 2020. This will be a period where we get some rhymes, reinforcements and rejections of the things that came up during the conjunction in 2020. I’m not saying we will get another global pandemic, though it’s in the realm of possibility. This time period will “rhyme” with 2020, in the sense that we’ll see a lot of similar topics, events and people popping up again. However, it won’t go exactly the same way.

There were a lot of rules and legislation brought into place as a result of the pandemic, so I’m expecting that a lot of those will be on the table in 2028-29. Some will be reinforced and given more power. Others will be discarded.

And that takes us to the end of the decade.

Stay tuned for my in-depth forecast on 2025. I should have that posted sometime in very early January. Thanks for reading this far, and Happy New Year!