
King John extorted into signing the Magna Carta, the basis for eroding his and his heirs' divine rights.
Take that, royal bitches!
In 1297 the Magna Carta and its companion, the Forest Charter, were passed into English statutory law. The passage of these charters, which for the first time granted rights to people who were not royalty, has long been considered the foundation of today's liberal democracies.
During the 1530s - 1550s the Church of England was established to separate England from the papal authority of Rome, turning England Protestant. This was the heart of the Protestant Reformation, established by Martin Luther's rebellion against Catholic tradition based on the declaration that each individual receives God's grace through faith alone.
In September of 1787 the United States constitution was signed, the first Western government to organize around democratic principles guided by the declaration that all people are free by birthright. This was followed in 1789 by France's Declaration of the Rights of Man, establishing a basis for freedom for all citizens. Its companion, the Declaration of the Rights of Woman, was published in 1791. This was the heart of the Enlightenment, when kings and popes were stripped of their traditional autocratic powers, and superstition became superseded by science.
All of these historical periods refer to eras of revolutionary change that resulted in greater freedoms for common people. In each case, power traditionally concentrated at the top was theretofore distributed more evenly throughout the populace.
And each period occurred during a transit of Pluto through Aquarius.
A terse translation of Pluto (power) in Aquarius (humanity) is "power to the people". But what power, and to which people? Clearly, none of the events mentioned above resulted in anything close to an ideal society. Gross inequities across race, class, gender, and religion continue to this day. Yet we can clearly see that there is a progression of general social mobility across the centuries. We are all inheritors of the rights established from the Magna Carta to the U.S. Constitution, both of which were great and unlikely innovations of their time and have influenced the shape of political institutions around the world.
Pluto in Aquarius is an apt symbol for these events because it symbolizes the dissemination of power throughout a populace. Every time Pluto transits through Aquarius we see an increase in the enlightenment of sociopolitical policy grounded in values of individual liberty built upon what came before.
Pluto enters Aquarius again this year, on March 23rd, 2023, the first time since 1798. It will reverse course and regress into Capricorn in June, then will enter Aquarius again in January 2024 and transit there until 2044.
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