2025: Saturn-Neptune times

2025 is pretty wild. Obviously, Mars is retrograde right now until about the end of February, and if you're feeling burned out, you're not alone, but please remember you're supposed to be rethinking things you're doing rather than starting new things or abruptly ending old things (I had a spiritual teacher quit this week, and if it was me, I would have stalled til the energy was direct again). As Mars concludes its retrograde, Mercury and Venus will retrograde at about the same time (March & April) in about the same place (Aries back into Pisces). So all the personal planets that can retrograde do retrograde, and if you're not rethinking some element of your personal life, be it love, action, passion, or logistics, I will be shocked. This is the first part of the year: getting ourselves straightened out. I'll talk more about the Venus & Mercury thing later. This is very much a one-thing-at-a-time year.

As we're catching our breath from all that, Saturn and Neptune collide in the sky (this starts in 2025 and continues into 2026). This happens every 36.4 years, per Google. My experience of this transit is running into a wall (Saturn energy) you didn't see was there (Neptune energy). I know that's an odd thing to say, but if it's ever happened to you, it's a pretty memorable event, and you can spend weeks, months, or years wondering to yourself how you missed an entire wall. But if you're distracted, hopeful, or thinking of other things, well, that's how. Saturn and Neptune are not personal planets so we may be doing this as a society or globally or...fill in the blank.

When Saturn collides with outer planets, which it last did in 2020 (shudders), you have some sort of test of endurance ahead of you. In 2020, the collision was Pluto (and Jupiter for a little bit). The difference between the energies is what we're being asked to endure. With Pluto it was being scared out of our minds: another notable Pluto-Saturn period was 2001 where there was the specter of terrorism everywhere, and then in 2020 we became afraid of breathing places. Saturn-Neptune is simply enduring hardship: you don't have something you need and you have to figure it out anyway. You can substitute that lack with some faith that things will work out, but expect that faith to vary in its strength day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute. You can also look at the difference between the two aspects by looking at people with Saturn-Pluto vs. Saturn-Neptune in their birth charts: Saturn-Pluto people don't trust other people, and Saturn-Neptune people don't trust that their resources will be enough or will always be there. My grandparents on one side were children of the depression, and were constantly hoarding leftovers: they HAD food, they just didn't trust it would be enough. They both had Saturn-Neptune conjunctions and Pluto in Cancer, so there were at least 2 reasons for that.

Neptune transits are like suddenly running a marathon with no warning and no training (and probably the wrong shoes): you don't know how long the race goes, but you're in it and you're running it and you're usually pretty tired, but you have to keep going and trust that it WILL end at some point. You can guess where this upcoming race will be by looking at the house in which Saturn and Neptune collide in your chart. Hint: where are the early degrees of Aries (0° & 1°) in your chart? Expect a marathon there. If you don't have to run one, great. You might be spectating instead.

So back to faith, which I already mentioned briefly: Saturn-Neptune times are good times for learning faith or losing faith. What do you do if your safety net goes away? How do you react if someone you always thought would be there for you isn't? What do you do if you're the only resource you have? What happens if you've been trusting someone that it turns out you should NOT have trusted? These questions make me think of Maria's quote in the Sound of Music: "when the lord closes a door, somewhere he opens a window." I thoroughly believe in this, having experienced this when Saturn and Neptune were squaring off in the sky a number of years ago. I spent a long time lamenting the closed door because I didn't want the open window, so I'm saying I wasted a lot of time staring at that door. Now, when I look back, I see the window instead of the door, which is revisionist history, but it's more pleasant.

Saturn-Neptune energy is what social welfare programs are made of. So you can devote time to helping build a structure that actually helps people, or you can get really spiritual, or you can have your faith tested daily. Which of those sounds like the best use of your time? Saturn-Neptune is about learning to be of service even when there's nothing in it for you. Sometimes service is based on a genuine desire to help and other times people serve to distract themselves from their many personal problems they'd rather not look at. It's truly a mixed bag, but I think as humans it's hard to be 100% altruistic. 80% is reasonable. (What I mean is: don't kid yourself that you're 100% altruistic when you're being super nice—you're benefitting somehow.)

One other thing: Saturn is about authority figures. Saturn-Pluto energy is "authority figures might be trying to kill you" and Saturn-Neptune energy is "authority figures are useless, so you have to wing it." Both scream "daddy issues": a Saturn-Pluto daddy is diabolical and possibly in the mafia, and a Saturn-Neptune daddy is straight-up missing (and/or an alcoholic). Neither daddy can be trusted.

So here's why I'm not freaking out: 1. people love to look at astrology and panic and I'm more or less over it, because essentially we get what we get, then we deal with it, then we move on to the next thing. 2. I've had Neptune conjunct my midheaven my entire life, which is a version of a Saturn-Neptune aspect, and it just changes your reality on a weekly basis and makes authority figures act pretty inconsistently to begin with (as well as changing my reputation all the time, but that's another story for another day, though I would like to add that in 2024 a relative stranger told me to my face that I have a health condition that I don't have, because someone else told her I did). I've also hit a wall before during Saturn-Neptune times. So, I'm not saying I'm a master of the energy, but at some point you shrug: yep, that's a wall! Saturn energy is as real as it gets, and Neptune energy is as unreal as it gets, and these two sitting next to each other is uncomfortable. I also have a day job which is as concrete and real and paperwork-filled as it gets (want to see a fun collection of binders?), and this as a hobby, in addition to psychic work, which is filled with "I don't know what this means to you but this is what I'm getting..." and I've gotten pretty good at living with a foot in both.

The trick to navigating all energies is to see what comes up and do your best to react to it as it happens. It's rare that you look at your chart and see Saturn coming and think "oh good! Yay! I'm going to be extra-realistic all the time for 9 months!" You can think about what it MIGHT do, or you can just focus on what energy it's hitting: "It's coming for my sun and I will likely have extra responsibilities. I can spend the whole time complaining or I can suck it up and deal with it." Or Neptune: "this area of my life is going to feel up in the air while I identify what *really* matters to me and get rid of what doesn't, so I shouldn't make any (legally) binding decisions." It's actually not very complicated.

Anyway, if you get lost or find your wall, you know where to find me...