The astrology of the second half of the 2020s heralds accelerated change and technological innovations that will reshape reality in ways that will make the recent past seem like a distant memory. Part of the reason is that Pluto, Neptune and Uranus will all change signs in between 2023 and 2025, with all three transitioning from slower moving nocturnal signs into faster moving diurnal (of or during the day) signs that will all form trine or sextile aspects with one another. There has been a lot of astrological discussion on the significance of Pluto entering Aquarius and Uranus entering Gemini, for good reason, but the scorching heat of Neptune in Aries will be a key catalyst of the vast changes set in motion.
There is a dramatic contrast between Neptune in the fiery sign of Aries and the meaning of Neptune in the watery sign of Pisces. While Pisces has an inwardly directed focus on synthesising meaning and moves with a more leisurely and unrushed pace, the fire of Aries activates quick leaps of forward momentum. Neptune in Aries will stimulate action sourced from inner dreams, encouraging bold movement that turns imaginal ideals into reality. Neptune will enter Aries on 30 March 2025, spending over half of the year in the sign of the Ram before returning for a final sojourn in Pisces from 22 October 2025 until 27 January 2026. After re-entering Aries at the end of January 2026, Neptune will remain in Aries for over twelve years.
Neptune has been in Pisces since February 2012, after having spent four months in Pisces in 2011. Neptune’s connections with the boundless depths of the imaginal and spiritual dimensions have a potent affinity with the oceanic sign of Pisces. Neptune corresponds with the intangible, the unitive, the numinous and the mystical, with both the visionary insight as well as confusing fantasies that emerge from the dream realm. Neptune generates dreams, yet the churning of the sea-blue planet’s waves brings dissolution and the disillusionment of the dream’s death, just as much as they lift us into the bliss of dream fulfillment. In Pisces, Neptune has dramatically expressed its archetypal force for both good and ill. There has been a powerful renaissance in occult fields such as astrology and the magical arts during the time of Neptune transiting Pisces, yet the bedazzling illusions of Neptune have also amplified the power of social media and the Internet to distort reality.
In some ways, the experience of Neptune in Pisces is like spending time at an idyllic beach immersed in the shifting sand and hypnotic waves of the ocean. We can feel moments of inspiration that transcend the limitations of our daily reality by the ocean, as memories of the past and visions of the future swirl together and give us a sense of shape shifting into new forms of creativity and inspiration. Spending time in the waves at the ocean’s edge is not ideal for completing tasks on your to-do list, but connecting with the inspirational force of the infinite sea can facilitate release from restrictive influences and greater receptivity to one’s soulful essence. The boundlessness of Pisces has accentuated the transcendent impact of Neptune and, in positive ways, there have been opportunities to dissolve old identities and form new visions of future growth that align with one’s essential creativity. To understand what the shift from Neptune in Pisces to Aries will mean for you, it will be helpful to reflect upon your experiences while Neptune has been in Pisces since 2012, noticing how the images you hold of a more fulfilling life have been reshaped in correlation.
Neptune’s impact
Neptune’s impact in astrology can seem subtle as well as confusing, yet it ultimately plays an important role in shaping storylines. The unifying influence of Neptune can fuse our awareness with an inner dream that makes life worth living, as well as erode our sense of separation from others as we become swept up in group identities and collective movements. The watery nature of Pisces has intensified the way Neptune dissolves old sources of security and draws us into inner soul searching from which visionary images of future possibility may emerge.
As Neptune shifts from Pisces to Aries, spirited sparks of inspiration will galvanise action and focus the imaginal fire of the mind. The blazing heat of Aries combined with its cardinal nature will embolden the imaginal force of Neptune, motivating quick movement toward idealised dreams of progress and potential. Neptune in Aries will light inner fire, making us more likely to initiate change with impulsive speed. Rather than cautiously refraining from making a full commitment to the changes required by turning a dream into reality, there will be more of a tendency to instinctually take action to make something happen.
Although Neptune in the fiery home of Mars will provide greater impetus to directly act in pursuit of idealised dreams, we will need to be more mindful than ever of the illusory side of Neptune. The wish fulfillment of Neptune will catch fire in Aries and so the visions of change we set into motion can spread like wildfire. Neptune’s time in Pisces has already been teaching us lessons in being careful of what you wish for, but the more you can become clear about what you truly desire to achieve and the associated long-term consequences, the better you will be able to navigate the dramatic threshold of Neptune moving back and forth in between Pisces and Aries in 2025 and 2026. There will be a noticeable difference in the speed of Neptune’s process in Aries that may feel exciting, but we will need to be mindful of the repercussions of what we wish for and set our minds to accomplish.
It is significant that, in some strands of ancient thought, fire is the base substance of the cosmos and the element that initiates and sustains creation. Out of all four of the elements in astrology, fire is the element that rises to the summit of celestial heights and is most strongly associated with spirit and divine inspiration. Just like flames ascend to the heavens above, so can the element of fire inspire yearning to merge with the divine. As a result, the celestial luminosity kindled by Neptune in Aries will elevate some to heights of religious ecstasy, spiritual insight and imaginal revelation. Yet, many will also risk becoming inflated by the heat of inner fire, dogmatic in their beliefs and unwilling to consider other perspectives. Fire requires fuel to consume or risks burning out, making it important to be mindful of what you are using to feed the cosmic fire of Neptune in Aries to stay grounded.
Zero degrees of Aries
There are two aspects of Neptune’s ingress into Aries that make it more important than the usual significance of Neptune changing signs. One is that the division in between Pisces and Aries is marked by the Aries Point of zero degrees Aries that defines the intersection of the ecliptic (the zodiac belt defined by the Sun’s apparent path) and the celestial equator of Earth (the Earth’s equator extended into space). Each year when the sun transits zero degrees of Aries, we experience a temporary passage of equal day and night all around the world. In the southern hemisphere, it marks transition into the increasing darkness of Autumn, while in the northern hemisphere it marks entrance into the increasing light of Spring.
Since zero degrees of Aries is the pivotal degree marking the Sun beginning its ascension to its greatest height of declination at the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere, the Aries Point has been given the astrological symbolism of a north node that signifies general increase. The symbolism of increase matches the phenomenon of planets ascending from southern declination below the celestial equator into northern declination above the celestial equator as they transit past zero degrees of Aries. Planets transiting this degree have a reputation for making a much larger impact in world events than normal, so we can expect the impact of Neptune crossing back and forth over zero degrees of Aries to correspond with an augmentation of the numinous realm, as related to Neptune, as well as how many can succumb to great illusion under the waves of Neptune.
Although Neptune will not reach zero degrees of declination until April 2026, as soon as Neptune enters Aries in March 2025, we will experience a surging increase of Neptune’s influence within personal and collective events.
Enter Saturn
The biggest factor making Neptune’s entrance into Aries unusually important is the presence of Saturn. After Neptune enters Aries on 30 March 2025, Saturn will follow less than two months later, entering Aries on 25 May 2025. Saturn and Neptune will remain together in Aries during 2025, from 25 May until 1 September, with Saturn getting as close as 13 arc minutes away from Neptune on 13 July.
Saturn and Neptune will ultimately complete their 36-year cycle by coming into an exact conjunction at 00°45’ Aries on 21 February 2026, but their proximity during 2025 will effectively feel like a conjunction. During June, July and August of 2025, we will collectively experience a strange fusion of the disparate natures of Saturn and Neptune mixed in Aries. Because the conjunction of Saturn and Neptune is taking place at zero degrees of Aries, we can expect to experience an amplified increase of their combined meaning in 2025 and 2026.
The serious gravity and pressurised contraction that Saturn brings in transit will make our initial experience of Neptune in Aries feel heavy and sombre at times. It could feel somewhat like swimming while bearing an additional weight, or navigating your ship through turbulent seas while carrying heavy cargo. The meaning of Saturn and Neptune coming together is multivalent, with an extremity of differences in corresponding experiences.
On one side of it, Saturn will cast a dark shadow over the dreamscape of Neptune, correlating with disillusioning experiences that can be difficult yet also open awareness to deeper truth in the end. On another side of it, the combination of Saturn and Neptune also creates a time to become disciplined in your spiritual practices, serious about your dreams and ideals, and pragmatic in taking action to create the life you wish to live.
Rick Tarnas in Cosmos and Psyche wrote that Saturn and Neptune time periods “tend to be among the most psychologically and spiritually demanding of times as well as the most likely to call forth genuine nobility of spirit and profundity of vision.”
One of the reasons the Saturn and Neptune cycle is of paramount importance is due to them being the two outermost planets — Saturn has always been significant as the most distant planet we can visibly see in the sky throughout its cycle, whereas Neptune is now considered to be the outermost proper planet now that Pluto has been reclassified as a dwarf planet. In these threshold roles Saturn and Neptune are all about the relationship between the visible and the invisible. They are fundamental to our perception and what we personally and collectively consider to be reality; the visible concrete forms and the multiplicity of invisible influences. The Saturn and Neptune cycle reveals how our collective perception of reality changes across time, as well as how we personally and collectively confront the gap between reality and the ideal.
The combination of Saturn and Neptune can manifest in extreme ways for better and for worse. We can expect Saturn and Neptune combining in the fiery domicile of Mars to correlate with an increase in religious dogmatism that can turn aggressively persecutory at times, with the boundaries of Saturn obstructing alternate belief systems and keeping religious crusaders contained within a feedback loop of reinforcing beliefs. At the same time, the synergy between Saturn and Neptune can lead to profound discoveries in a wide spectrum of fields due to the ability of Saturn to concretise the immaterial insights of Neptune.
Marsilio Ficino wrote that the reason Saturn excels at discovering and retaining things is that it pulls us down to the centre of individual subjects, while forcing investigations to the centre of material. At the same time, Saturn leads us to contemplate the highest realm, because Saturn is the highest planet. When Saturn and Neptune merge, old reality constructs disintegrate while new forms of vision coagulate out of the dissolution.
In the past
To fully understand the profound significance of Saturn and Neptune conjoining, it’s necessary to consider what happened during their previous alignments. The cycle between Saturn and Neptune coming to an end now began in 1989, when revolutions swept across the globe. Revolutionary events included Tiananmen Square in China, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the overturning of communist regimes in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Romania that led to the end of the USSR. The three conjunctions between Saturn and Neptune in Capricorn in 1989 also correlated with the invention of the World Wide Web, the first attempts to genetically modify humans, and the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa. While Uranus was also copresent in Capricorn when Saturn and Neptune came together last time, and would have amplified the revolutionary leaps of development that occurred, Saturn and Neptune have a long history of redefining eras when they form conjunctions.
The last time that Saturn and Neptune formed a conjunction in Aries was in 1703 during the Age of Enlightenment. Although historians define the beginning of the Age of Enlightenment as occurring before the entrance of Neptune into Aries in 1697, the way that The Enlightenment emphasised individual liberty and greater religious tolerance in opposition to the absolute power of religious authorities, fits well with the meaning of Neptune in Aries. Saturn and Neptune uniting in Aries at the beginning of the 18th century corresponds with The Enlightenment’s focus on using the scientific method to question religious orthodoxy.
Related to the new insights and innovations that emerge during Saturn and Neptune time periods, which began altering the human conception of reality, Gottfried Leibniz, in 1703, developed the binary number system now used in virtually all computers. In a book published in 1710, while Neptune was still in Aries, Leibniz used principles of reasoning to conclude that the first reason of all things is God and asserted that human nature could be guided to greater perfection by correct philosophy and religion. Just as Aries is the exaltation of the Sun, we can see during The Enlightenment how divine intellect was viewed as an ultimate principle to guide consciousness to reform and right action.
Saturn was not in the same sign as Neptune the last time that Neptune was in Aries, from 1861 to 1874. As Neptune transitioned back and forth in between Pisces and Aries in 1861 and 1862, the Civil War in the United States of America erupted. Although the transit of Neptune in Pisces correlated with the rising tensions and escalating events that led to the beginning of the American Civil War, Neptune entered Aries the day after the first shots of the war were fired and the majority of the rest of the war was fought with Neptune in Aries. Fitting the freedom-oriented symbolism of Neptune in Aries, the violent upheaval of the Civil War ultimately led to the abolishment of slavery in the United States. The Civil War was also significant due to exposing the horrors of industrial warfare, as well as the fact that the gruesome, massive deaths of the war were documented by photography for the first time. As Neptune relates archetypally to the power and symbolic depth of the image, it is significant that images increased public awareness of the bloody, horrific and soul-wrenching consequences of industrial warfare for the first time with Neptune in the fiery domicile of Mars.
It therefore makes sense that as Neptune is coming to the end of its time in Pisces, there has been increasing collective fear that the multiple regional wars happening around the world will expand into larger scale, global warfare with Neptune in Aries or additional civil wars within nations. Combined with increasing fears about the rapid advancements in AI and other forms of technology holding the potential to radically alter conceptions of reality, there is a growing collective sense that we are living in a transitional time of immense uncertainty. The increasing fears of the unknown and crises of faith circulating globally resonate with the meaning of Saturn and Neptune coming together into a conjunction that will give birth to a new cycle between them. Though Saturn and Neptune time periods typically shepherd us through a dark night of the soul collectively, extraordinary spiritual insight, soulful resilience and redemptive movements focused on creating a better world can also be forged out of their fusion.
The constellational myth of Aries centres on a golden-fleeced and winged ram named Chrysomallus, who swooped down from the heavens to rescue two noble children about to be sacrificed to the gods. Remarkably, in relation to the symbolism of Neptune in Aries, the father of this magical golden ram was Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea who had turned himself into a divine ram that sired Chrysomallus. The golden fleece of Chrysomallus ultimately became a talisman of colossal power and a sacred treasure that inspired legendary quests of heroism. We will all likely feel the call to seek a golden fleece of some sort or other while Neptune is in Aries, and so we will need to be mindful of not becoming fleeced by chasing after false grails while on fool’s errands.
The divine image of Hephaistos or any other artisan blacksmith will be helpful to use as a daimonic guide while Neptune is in Aries. A cunning smith uses the spirit of fire to forge metal, manipulating and shaping alloys into new forms through creativity and inspired imagination. As Neptune and Saturn enter Aries together in 2025 and unite in 2026, we will have the opportunity to participate in the moulding of important new structures that can help bring a sense of stability to the tumultuous collective times we will be living through. Take the time and space needed to clarify your dreams and ideals so that you may direct the celestial luminosity of Neptune in Aries into the work and purpose that will bring you true fulfillment and satisfaction.
