They’re coming. They haven’t even started being born yet but, rest assured, they’re coming. I’m talking about the so-called Beta Generation, that will be born under the overlapping transits of Pluto trough Aquarius and Neptune through Aries. The first of them will come into the world during the middle months of 2025 and they will keep on coming until 2038, when Neptune completes its transit of Aries and enters Taurus. That might seem a long way off but in generational terms it is just a tick of the clock.
What makes the Beta Generation worth waiting for is, first of all, the dynamic nature of the signs occupied by Pluto and Neptune. Aquarius is the sign of revolution. It gives direction and potency to the transformative power of Pluto. And then we add Neptune in Aries, the sign of leadership, courage and head-first, all-in purposefulness. This will be a generation that will never see a problem, only challenges waiting to be overcome.
What is also significant about the Beta Generation is its relationship with a previous generation. This is the first wave of the Baby Boom Generation born between 1942 and 1956 with Pluto in Leo and Neptune in Libra, the signs opposite Aquarius and Aries. The relationship described by this opposition will not be between individuals within those two generations. Most of the first wave Boomers will be long gone by the time the Beta Generation reaches adulthood in the middle of the Twenty-First Century. Instead that relationship will be between Betas and the legacy of the Boomer group.
That legacy is substantial. That is partly because the first wave Boomers were also born with Pluto and Neptune in dynamic signs. Leo is the sign of the hero and the savior. Since this generation was born during the 1940s and 50s under the shadow of imminent nuclear holocaust, they grew up in a world that seemed to desperately need that Leo heroism. They also grew up in a world in which the way in which women, people of color and people in the LBGQ community were treated was horribly unfair and, with Neptune in Libra, they made it their mission to balance those scales and remedy that unfairness.
Of course, this Baby Boom generation had something else going for them other than the dynamic nature of Leo and Libra. They were a very big generation. They were born during the historic increase in the birth rate that began in the United States in the early 1940s and really took off after World War II ended in 1945. Thanks to this phenomenal crop of babies (which occurred while Pluto was in Leo, the sign associated with both children and creativity) this generation came into the world in numbers that dwarfed previous generations and surpassed even the large cohort of the second wave Boomers that followed them. These numbers would make this generation a dominant force in the Twentieth Century and the early years of the Twenty-First.
Even though we have no way of knowing what the birthrate will be in 2025, given the what we’ve seen with Generation Z and the Alpha Generation (the generations that precede Beta) we have to assume that it will remain relatively low.. There’s no way that the Beta generation will achieve that kind of numbers that made the first wave Boomers such an impactful group. However, the Beta group have something else going for them. While the span of Generation Z and the Alphas was limited to around ten years, Generation Beta will extend to nearly 15. They will likely be more numerous than either the “Zoomer” or the Alphas simply because the number of years covered by the overlap of the transits of Pluto through Aquarius and Neptune through Aries will be longer.
In Generational Astrology size matters. The bigger the generation, the more influence it will have on society. So we have to expect that, just as the first wave Boomers became the “big dogs” of the last half of the Twentieth Century and influenced just about every aspect of American life, Generation Beta will have a similar influence on the latter half to the Twenty-First.
One indication of the pervasive influence of the first wave Boomers is what other generations, and sometimes people from their own had to say about them. Depending on who you ask, this is the generation that solved racial discrimination and ended the persecution of gays and lesbians[i] or it is the generation that, through a combination of supreme arrogance and shameless self-indulgence, destroyed both the environment and the moral fiber of the entire world.[ii] One could argue with the factual basis of those two points of view but the sweeping nature of statements like this, which abound in the many books written about the Baby Boom generation, are ample proof of this generations influence. You don’t get that kind of praise or that kind of criticism by sitting on the sidelines.
With Pluto in the ever contrary sign of Aquarius and Neptune in combative Aries, it seems likely that the Beta Generation will also be rattling some cages as they approach adulthood. It is also likely that they will come into this world with the same sense of mission that characterized the first wave Boomers. For Boomers it was the threat of nuclear annihilation that sparked their sense of mission. For the Beta group it will likely be climate change, and all the social and economic havoc that phenomenon will be causing by the middle of the Twenty-First Century.
For a generation born with Pluto in Aquarius this crisis will be a call to put aside the notion of borders. The burning issues with which the Betas will be struggling will not be local or even national problems. They will encompass the entire planet and any solution has to come from efforts by all of humanity. That might seem insurmountable challenging, but this is also a generation with Neptune in Aries, a sign that loves a challenge, the more insurmountable, the better.
This is where the Beta Generation will truly prove its worth, but it could also where they will come up against the legacy of the first wave Boomers. That legacy is two-fold. With Pluto in Leo, these early Baby Boomers brought into the world an exalted concept of the individual and the power of individuality. This is the generation of “do you only thing” and “be yourself.” They saw the expression self as the ultimate goal of living. This is also, with Neptune in Libra, the generation that worshiped at the altar of “fairness” and, to a large extent, they have managed to make their Libran dream of a balanced scale an important factor in both American culture and American law.
Aquarius is also a sign that celebrates individuality, but that is individuality for the sake of a new and radical idea or ideology. Individuality for its own sake, like creativity for its own sake, does not fall within the purview of Aquarius. That’s a Leo thing and Aquarius will always tend to regard it as selfish and egocentric. Likewise, Aries has little patience with the Libran concept of fairness. For Aries, the reward always goes to the person who fights hardest to get it, not the person who deserves it the most.
So does this mean that the Beta Generation, with their generational signs opposite those of the first wave Boomers, will essentially cancel out the influence of the elder cohort? Not really. Every generation leaves a little something behind that informs humanity as a whole. The first wave of the Lost Generation left behind their awareness of the inhumanity and futility of modern warfare and, even though that lesson had to be emphatically reinforced by World War II, the lesson stuck and, despite all predictions to the contrary, humanity has steered clear of such a general conflagration ever since. Likewise, I think that the legacy of the first wave Boomer will endure, regardless of how often it gets in the way of subsequent generations. This is the lesson that this Boomer generation was sent to Earth to teach. The Beta cohort will bring us their own lesson and, no doubt, it will be equally important and enduring.
[i] Steinhorn, Leonard, “The Greater Generation: In Defense of the Baby Boom Legacy,” New York, St. Martin’s Press. 2006 pg. ii
[ii] Gibney, Bruce Cannon, “A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America,” New York, Hatchett Books, 2017 pg. 113-14