Anticipating - the Saturn/Neptune Conjunction in Aries

by Anne Whitaker

The old order changeth, yielding place to new...

Collective

You would have to be hiding under a rock somewhere very remote without wifi not to have noticed the above, aptly summed up by Alfred, Lord Tennyson in his prophetic 1842 poem "Morte d' Arthur.” The Old Order is indeed changing yet again, here in the early Spring of 2025.

As Google pithily put it when I did a search for the dates of the currently applying Saturn Neptune conjunction at the end of Pisces:

This seminal conjunction of Saturn and Neptune in Aries in February 2026 will signal the final dissolution of the global capitalist ideologies that were seeded with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. It will also signal the end of the current geo-political balance of power.
- (published 26 Jan 2025 on Google)

It remains to be seen whether the first half of this prediction is accurate.

However, following on the recent re-election of Donald Trump to the Presidency of the USA, “…the end of the current geo-political balance of power…” is happening even as I write (in mid March) with Saturn at 22 Pisces, Neptune anaretic at 29 Pisces – and Neptune's first entry into Aries due on 30 March 2025, immediately preceded on 29 March by a 9 Aries solar eclipse.

Saturn and Neptune's Pisces/Aries dance will continue throughout 2025 with Saturn's first entry into Aries on 25th May this year. Their exact conjunction at 0 degrees Aries takes place on 20th February 2026, the two planets remaining in orb in Aries until the early Spring of 2027.

It's fascinating to take a quick trawl through the conjunctions occurring during the 19th and 20th Centuries, to see how closely they are tied to the fate of the former Soviet Union: Marx and Engels published the Communist Manifesto following the Saturn/Neptune conjunction of 1846, which took place rather aptly in Aquarius. Then Karl Marx died in 1883, just after the 1882 conjunction in Taurus.

The 1917 Leo conjunction saw the Russian Revolution. The death of Stalin occurred on 5.3.1953, during the 1952/3 Libran one. During the Saturn/Neptune conjunction in Capricorn, the Berlin Wall came down: on 10.11.1989, the conjunction’s exact date.

Once again, an approaching Saturn /Neptune conjunction is bringing the fate of what was the USSR, the Russian Federation since December 1991, into high focus in our currently very war-torn and unstable world.

For example, there has been war in Europe since Russia invaded Ukraine in the Spring of 2022. However, in recent days a ceasefire deal between the USA and Ukraine has been announced which restores US military and intelligence support to Ukraine. It remains to be seen whether President Putin will accept this deal.

We are clearly heading into a period where old certainties (Saturn) are being eroded by the crumbling of illusions and the erosion of long-cherished ideals (Neptune).As astrologer Maurice Fernandez put it in his fine 2023 essay on the upcoming 2025-26 great conjunction of Saturn and Neptune When Walls Collapse and Heroes Rise:

...Saturn and Neptune converge to represent a humbling force where we must be held accountable to higher spiritual standards — it is an opportunity for governance on Earth (Saturn) to aspire to a more enlightened vision of universal order (Neptune)...

Well, let us hope so. Taking an upbeat note, out of the turbulence and chaos into which the world order is currently moving, we may eventually emerge in a few years' time into a worldwide community where the 'higher spiritual standards' mentioned in the above quote are beginning to be discernible as the mist clears.

Collective/Personal

I’ve recently read a wonderfully wise, deep, poetic post from Ronnie Grishman, Editor Emeritus of the much-missed Dell Horoscope magazine, offering her ‘take’ on the impact of this Saturn/Neptune time – and some thoughts on both its meaning and what it may be offering. Please take time to absorb her wisdom:

…We’re all facing important life passages now. Soul contracts call; many end…we’re all, each of us, grieving in some way, and we need to make space for this; to grieve our old selves, our comfort zones, our security…

Grieving for what is passing…but also, consciously or not, making space for whatever new energies may arise as Saturn, then Neptune cross the 0 Aries World Cardinal Point in March then May this year, meeting for the first time since 1989 in late February 2026.

Saturn last entered Aries in 1996; era-defining Neptune hasn’t been in Aries since the start of the American Civil War on April 12, 1861. Remarkably, Neptune entered Aries the very following day, remaining in that sign until 1876. Neptune in Aries is often associated with periods of societal upheaval, revolutionary movements, and potential for conflict, including civil wars, due to the combination of Aries' aggressive, action-oriented energy with Neptune's dissolving, idealistic nature.

Those of us ‘plugged in’ to the late degrees of Pisces/early Aries degrees have certainly been feeling the impact of this period of exceptional turbulence, uncertainty, dissolution and inexorable movement towards slow transition for one state of being to another.

Personal

I certainly have …

It’s been an exceptionally challenging, painful time for most of the people in my extended patchwork family, friends, students and colleagues group. Deaths expected and not, various kinds of trauma, serious illness etc have been hard for all concerned – including those of us having to stand by and offer what support we can. I have not escaped unscathed myself. True to the Saturn/Neptune archetype, the reliable certainties of our lives are eroding and dissolving…the Aries dynamism of new inspiration, bold journeys into the Unknown, is not ready to manifest as painful uncertainty swirls around so many of us.

However, those of you familiar with my work will know that I try to follow Jung’s dictum:

Our task in this life is to reconcile the opposites.

Those great poles of Shadow and Light both need to be honoured for us to have balance in our lives, to have acceptance; to have peace with the way things are rather than how we would like them to be. Currently, a major task is to find balance between Saturn and Neptune: form and dissolution.

In addressing this great lifelong task of reconciling opposites, I have found the study, teaching and practice of astrology to be hugely helpful. It offers a symbolic perspective – albeit not necessarily a comforting one when tough transits are looming – within which to set the engaging of one’s own tiny energy ‘chip’ (or horoscope if you prefer!) with the larger prevailing energy field of the times through which we are living.

As can be seen from my horoscope, I don’t so much have transits as lengthy demolitions/reconstructions when that Leonine planetary logjam in the 11th/12th Houses is triggered. However, I’m still here (as far as I know!!) and am in the process of being enrolled by the Fates into what will be the long final set of challenges presented by those great planetary archetypes (or gods, if you prefer…) Saturn, Uranus, Neptune – and Pluto.

They are all calling on me at the same time. I would be lying if I denied feeling apprehensive.

However – reflecting on the unexpected and changeful events of the last couple of years (bringing new opportunities with them) has made me realise that my life has indeed been responding to the call of those vast energies. As Liz Greene so memorably put it in one of her 1990s seminars:

‘You have to give the god what the god wants. And if it’s Mars, don’t offer a bunch of flowers!”

Pluto’s shift into Aquarius in March 2023 saw me move into a co-working space near my home for the first time – an opportunity appearing ‘out of the blue’. I’m loving being part of that community of diverse, mildly eccentric and warm-hearted folk.

May 2024, with anaretic Neptune’s sextile to my MC/NNode conjunction, squaring 10th House Mars, timed with my beginning A Neptunian Night Sea Journey. This is an account of my lengthy and challenging experiences of descent and return during Neptune’s 1998-2012 transit of Aquarius – with Neptune opposing all my Twelfth House Leo planets.

With apt timing, Pluto will be traversing that same sector of my horoscope for many years to come. So – dredging the depths of that period again via the many journals and notebooks I kept as a means of both recording a remarkable inner journey and keeping my balance in the outer world, seems a pretty apt way of making offerings to both Neptune and Pluto…

Furthermore, in May 2024 the Uranian left field unexpectedly delivered a very apt bolthole very near the sea to which I can retreat in order to sink into the writing of the book. Within the all-too limited terms of my human understanding, it seems I’m managing apt offerings to those great planetary gods, thus far at least…

As Saturn slowly catches up with Neptune, with Neptune’s entry into Aries at the end of March, and Saturn’s in the last week of May, I can feel both those planets’ tightening square to my 10th House Mars at 1.5 Cancer, prompting both my resistance to moving forward focusing on the book project (e.g. lying on the sofa with a good book) – and my need to give form to my efforts. Mars/Saturn/Neptune: not the easiest combination of energies…

How is this going to play out with me? And how are those of you ‘plugged into’ this powerful, contradictory Saturn/Neptune field managing? I’d love to compare notes with you…

Meanwhile, as my writing bolt hole is made ready for use, I’m preparing to get on with the drafting of A Neptunian Night Sea Journey, stalled at 36,000 words since last autumn 2024.

Saturn and Neptune’s conjunction at 0 Aries in February 2026, after their long Pisces/Aries dance during 2025, will initiate a major energetic shift for our world community, and for all of us ‘plugged in’ to the end of Pisces and the beginning of Aries – that Mars-ruled sign heralding Life’s energetic new sap rising:

the force that through the green fuse drives the flower

...as Welsh poet Dylan Thomas so memorably put it in his poem of the same name.

Bon Voyage, everyone!! May the Force be with you…