George Orwell did not write his novel “1984” as a prophetic manual, but rather as a warning.
A warning addressed to modern societies when they sacrifice individual conscience, language, and truth, in the name of security, efficiency, or ideology.
More than 70 years after its publication, the work resonates with a deeply unsettling clarity.
Not because the world has become a literal replica of Oceania, but because certain fundamental mechanisms described by Orwell are clearly manifesting today in new forms, more diffuse, often invisible and insidious.
The entry of Pluto into Aquarius opens a truly major astrological period for deeply questioning these transformations, one that will last until 2044 !
It directly brings into focus the relationship between power, technology, the collective, and systemic control.
It is precisely within this symbolic space that the dialogue between Orwell, our present moment, and astrology becomes fertile.
Unfortunately, the Age of Aquarius and its promised universal brotherhood may have to wait…
1984: a dystopia of total power
In “1984”, control does not rely solely on violence; it is exercised above all through the manipulation of information, permanent surveillance, and the destruction of language as a tool for autonomous thought.
The Party does not merely seek to govern bodies, but to colonize the mind.
Newspeak illustrates this logic: by reducing vocabulary, one reduces the very capacity to think subversive ideas.
The constant rewriting of the past and of History prevents any stable reference point from which to judge the present.
Surveillance, embodied by Big Brother, is not only coercive, it is internalized; it seeps into temperaments, and the individual ultimately comes to monitor himself, his family, his neighbors, his colleagues.
Orwell thus describes a form of power that no longer needs to be visible in order to be absolute; Big Brother is simply omnipresent.
Our present: faceless control
Contemporary societies are not living under a totalitarian dictatorship in the classic Orwellian sense.
Yet certain parallels are difficult to ignore.
Surveillance is no longer imposed in a brutal way; it is often consented to and omnipresent, within a constant tightening of control.
Individuals themselves provide their data, their habits, their opinions, in exchange for comfort, social recognition, or free services, soon to be followed by digital identity and the digital euro, which will be imposed from birth.
Control of information no longer operates through frontal censorship, but through saturation.
The excess of content, the fragmentation of attention, and emotional polarization make critical thinking more difficult.
Truth becomes fluid, contextual, sometimes secondary to emotional or algorithmic impact.
The pressure of social conformity no longer comes solely from the State, but from the collective itself: implicit norms, coordinated outrage, symbolic exclusion, tolerance toward what falls outside the democratic framework (such as Ursula Von Der Leyen, who has never been elected by anyone, yet makes decisions on behalf of all of Europe, while claiming to represent it).
Here again, control is largely internalized and masked.
Pluto in Aquarius: the power of systems
From an astrological perspective, Pluto symbolizes forces of radical transformation, dynamics of power, control, destruction, followed by rebirth.
Aquarius, for its part, is associated with the collective, networks, technology (the internet, artificial intelligence), ideologies, and abstract systems.
When Pluto transits Aquarius, power no longer concentrates solely in visible authority figures; it can diffuse into structures, infrastructures, technological systems, and collective logics.
Control becomes impersonal, algorithmic, often justified by ideals of progress, equality, protection of the vulnerable, or optimization (the pursuit of deep power advancing in disguise, officially “for the good of all”).
This transit highlights a central tension: the collective emancipation promised by Aquarius can also tip into dehumanization if it is captured by Plutonian logics of domination, which, it should be recalled, are historically linked to totalitarian mechanisms (in mundane astrology, they are strongly associated with such periods and with the countries involved).
Orwell and Pluto in Aquarius: a symbolic reading
The dystopia of “1984” can very well be read as an extreme anticipation of a Plutonian dynamic applied to the collective !
Big Brother is not merely a tyrant; he is the symbol of a total system, self-justified, closed in on itself, omnipresent and omnipotent, expressing ultimate power through ultimate coercion: that of the mind.
With Pluto in Aquarius, the question is not only who holds power, but how power becomes embodied in networks, norms, and technologies that no one truly controls on an individual level anymore (and God knows that in terms of absurd bureaucratic and technocratic norms, the West has become the undisputed global champion, especially Europe).
The danger of this Pluto is therefore not so much explicit tyranny (the villains arriving with boots and rifles), but the gradual loss of inner sovereignty through accumulated renunciations and discouragements imprinted in the minds of populations, in the face of a modernity moving at great speed and threatening to engulf individual lives.
Artificial intelligence and its developments will be the multiplying lever of this dynamic, acting as a double-edged weapon, becoming both indispensable to daily life while potentially granting immeasurable power to state entities (capable of processing billions of data points and carrying out ultra-detailed profiling).
This Plutonian transit is not solely a bearer of risks, as Pluto also acts as a revealer.
It exposes abuses, flaws, and deviations, and forces deep transformations and revolutions (its previous passage through Aquarius coincided with the French Revolution of 1789; one should not forget that the “purification” then took the form of the guillotine).
On the positive side, if these challenges are successfully overcome, it may also foster a collective awakening, a reappropriation of technology, and a redefinition of the relationship between the individual and the collective, though this is a battle far from being won in advance.
Orwell’s lesson remains central: freedom is not always lost through force, but through the gradual abandonment of inner vigilance, precise language, and critical thinking, and it is perhaps here that our greatest vigilance is required.
Rereading Orwell’s work in the era of Pluto in Aquarius is less about declaring a fulfilled prophecy on every page than about recognizing archetypal dynamics at work that have always threatened society, but which are now accelerating in the present, particularly due to technology.
The transit of Pluto in Aquarius will confront us with a collective choice: to use systems to liberate or to alienate, to awaken or to normalize, according to the acceptances and submissions we make.
As in Orwell’s world, the fundamental question remains: how far are we willing to surrender our inner freedom in the name of comfort, security, or progress ?
George Orwell’s birth chart
Born on June 25, 1903, in Motihari, India, at 2:30 pm (LMT), his chart is particularly Plutonian !
One can clearly see both his Scorpio Ascendant and an entire stellium in the 8th House, where Pluto is strong in domicile, also hosting Neptune and 3 personal planets, including the 2 luminaries, the Sun and the Moon, as well as Mercury.
His Pluto is also in a clear opposition to Uranus, forming a T-square with Jupiter at the apex; these are 3 planets capable of expressing different facets of power, here locked in direct confrontation (Promethean power for Uranian energies, magnetic and instinctive power for Plutonian energies, and social power for Jovian energies).
Interestingly, one finds many “high ideals” in his chart: strong Neptunian energies heavily marking the Sun and Moon, powerful Jovian and Sagittarian influences, all blended with Pluto, which greatly facilitated his understanding of the saying : “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”.
This was also strongly reflected in his political commitments; although he was clearly a man of the political left at heart, this did not prevent him from offering a scathing critique of communism.
It should not be forgotten that in his lifetime he experienced British imperialism, took part in the Spanish Civil War, witnessed the rise and excesses of communism, and lived through the Second World War against Nazism; he was truly caught at the heart of a major historical whirlwind from which he drew all his inspiration to write “1984” (in 1949) and “Animal Farm” (in 1945)…
This striking contrast is what most strongly emerges from his chart: between this Plutonian violence, with its sharp critical eye, and a particular focus on so-called “good intentions”.
He possessed many strong astrological assets in his birth chart, with a large number of well-dignified planets (5 planets in domicile).
There is also a karmic emphasis around the Martian function to be developed, conjunct the North Node, yet ruler of the South Node in Aries.
This type of configuration is often found in individuals who carry a karmic task related to violence and personal assertion.
With Mars also being the most weakened planet in his chart, in detriment in Libra, this astrological configuration likely made him deeply fearful of contact with the violence of others and of the world at large (fears he would later exorcise through his writings).
In any case, Orwell was truly visionary regarding the excesses and future trajectories of Western societies…