Generational Astrology - The Basic Breakdown - Start of the 20th Century to Mid-Century
5/18/2026
I was fascinated by Thomas Paine, who said people were more like their generation than their parents. He was a catalyst for the American Revolution. He self-published a kind of manifesto that was distributed to the colonists. His treatise was a call to independence that pushed them to fight for the British.
I think, in many ways, Thomas Paine was right: the time one is born articulates the environment a person develops in and defines how one sees the world. Of course, we are individuals, and these general themes are just that. We are also unique, complicated, and nuanced beings.
We are currently in an era where there are no more guardrails; anyone can publish their ideas on platforms like Substack and find others of like mind. This has its advantages. People feel less alone with their experiences and ideas. Gatekeepers have lost their ability to control the narrative. This is good and bad.
Culturally, we have splintered into a million pieces. We no longer gather around the radio, the newspaper, or the TV to receive a unified message. But as we all know, disinformation, misinformation, and manipulation are also part of the equation. Now more than ever, generations feel segmented into different information silos, with very different experiences of the world as we watch it break down, and the American Dream move from a coma into a death rattle. What was true for the Silent generation (1929/30-1940/43, Pluto in Cancer & Neptune in Virgo) and the Boomers (what I call Royals, 1940/43-1957/58, Neptune in Libra & Pluto in Leo) is no longer the world Gen Z grew up in.
The stage for the modern world began with the revolutionary technological breakthroughs at the start of the 20th century. In 1889, Neptune and Pluto were both in Gemini until 1902, when income inequality was at an extreme, almost as bad as now. This period is known as the Gilded Age (1870s-1900). The 13-year span was a foundational era of innovation, marking the transition from the Second Industrial Revolution into the modern technological age. It produced the first powered airplane flight, the automobile, x-rays, electricity, AC current, the invention of modern air conditioning, the widespread adoption of film and audio recording, punch-card data processing, and the dawn of radio communication. This explosion of new technology and innovation was aided by the tight conjunction of Neptune (imagination) and Pluto (transformation) in 1889-1890 in Gemini (communication, transportation, calculation, the mind).
Neptune went into Cancer while Pluto remained in Gemini from 1902-1913. In 1914, Pluto moved into Cancer, and in 1915, Neptune moved into Leo, thereby creating the next generation, Neptune in Leo, Pluto in Cancer, known as The Greatest Generation.
The generational markers can be a bit messy because Neptune’s cycle is 165 years while Pluto’s is 248 years. Over time, they change in aspect to each other. The other issue is that Pluto has an extremely elliptical, tilted orbit, which makes it more likely to stay in certain signs than others. It really seemed to like being in Cancer. Pluto moved into Cancer in 1914 and stayed there until 1938 (24 years), so the main generational marker during that period was Neptune. The big difference between the Greatest Generation (1914-1929) and the Silent/Depression Generation (1929-1943/44) was Pluto moving from Cancer into Leo in 1940, and Neptune moving from Virgo into Pisces in 1943/44. Interesting to note that the depression started the year Neptune went into Virgo and ended as the depression was coming to an end. Neptune moved from brave, loyal, royal, big-hearted, gambler Leo (The Royals/Booms share this signature in their Pluto placement) to analytical, service-oriented, food-and work-oriented, austere, critical Virgo (Gen X shares this in their Pluto placement).
