After fourteen years dissolving boundaries in the collective waters of Pisces, Neptune crosses into Aries for the first time since 1861—bringing spiritual warfare, ideological conflict, and the dissolution of the self into uncharted territory.
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When Neptune last crossed into Aries, the year was 1861. The American Civil War had just begun. Germany would not unify for another decade. The very concept of nationhood, of fighting for an ideal, of what we are willing to die for—these questions were being forged in blood and confusion across the Western world. Now, for the first time in 165 years, Neptune returns to the sign of the warrior, and we are about to find out what happens when the planet of dreams enters the house of war.
The mathematics of this moment are precise, even if its meaning remains beautifully unclear. Neptune takes approximately 165 years to complete one orbit around the Sun, meaning each sign receives the planet's influence for roughly 14 years. Neptune has occupied Pisces since 2011, dissolving collective boundaries, blurring the lines between truth and fiction, and immersing us in what often felt like an oceanic fog of confusion, compassion, and spiritual seeking. But the waters are receding. The shoreline of Aries is approaching.
The transition is not a single moment but a process—a drawn-out border crossing between elemental realms. On March 30, 2025, Neptune makes its first tentative step into Aries, dipping a toe into the fire before retreating. This preview period lasts until October 22, 2025, when Neptune retrogrades back into Pisces, as if reconsidering the commitment. The planet stations direct in Pisces on December 10, 2025, gathering itself for the permanent crossing. Then, between January 26 and January 27, 2026, depending on your ephemeris calculations, Neptune officially re-enters Aries and begins its 14-year journey through the sign of the ram.
The cycle completes in March 2039, when Neptune exits Aries for the next sign in its backward dance through the zodiac. We are looking at a 14-year window that will define a generation's relationship to spirituality, conflict, identity, and the dissolution of the self in pursuit of something larger.
When the planet of dreams enters the sign of war, we do not get peaceful sleep. We get visions that demand action, ideals that require defenders, and a collective reckoning with what we are willing to fight for—and whether we even know who we are fighting.
The historical record offers no comfort and no clear predictions, only pattern. When Neptune occupied Aries from 1861 to 1875, the United States fought its bloodiest war over questions of union, identity, and human freedom. The Confederacy and the Union were not merely political entities; they represented fundamentally different visions of what the nation meant, what human beings were worth, and what principles deserved the sacrifice of lives. Neptune in Aries dissolved the boundary between political conviction and holy war.
During this same period, Germany underwent its unification process, transforming from a collection of independent states into a single nation. As Astrology from the Soul notes, "Germany as a whole was supposed to be more important than its previous singular parts." The Neptune-in-Aries theme is unmistakable: the dissolution of smaller identities into a larger, more aggressive collective purpose. Individual states surrendered their boundaries. Individual selves were asked to become something greater.
Earlier Neptune-in-Aries periods show similar patterns. The 1697-1711 transit coincided with the dawn of the Enlightenment, when old certainties about religion and monarchy began dissolving under the assault of reason—reason wielded, it must be said, with considerable ideological fervor. The 1533-1547 transit overlapped with the English Reformation, when the dissolution of monasteries remade the spiritual landscape of an entire nation and individual believers were forced to choose between competing visions of salvation.
The pattern is not that Neptune in Aries causes specific events. The pattern is that Neptune in Aries dissolves the boundaries around conflict, identity, and belief, making every fight feel existential and every cause feel spiritual.
To understand what changes, we must first understand what is ending. Neptune in Pisces, the sign it rules, has been a period of collective dissolution. The boundaries between self and other, truth and fiction, reality and fantasy have grown permeable. We have swum in waters of collective emotion—sometimes healing, sometimes drowning. Social media algorithms have fed us personalized realities. Conspiracy theories have flourished not because people are stupid, but because Neptune in Pisces makes it difficult to distinguish between what feels true and what is true. The collective has dreamed, and the dream has been murky.
Aries is not murky. Aries is the spark, the ignition, the individual will asserting itself against all obstacles. When Neptune moves from Pisces to Aries, the dissolution shifts from the collective to the individual. The question changes from "What are we feeling?" to "What am I fighting for?"
Saturn Season frames the essential question of this transit: "What are we fighting for? Who are we fighting (and should we be fighting them in the first place)? Do we even fucking know anymore?" These are not rhetorical questions. Neptune in Aries will dissolve the clarity of our convictions even as it intensifies the passion with which we hold them. We may find ourselves fighting for causes we cannot fully articulate, against enemies we cannot clearly identify, with a fervor that feels both holy and confused.
If Neptune in Pisces was the mystic drowning in the collective unconscious, Neptune in Aries is the spiritual warrior—the one who takes their visions into battle. This is not necessarily violent in the literal sense, though it can be. It is the dissolution of the boundary between sacred and profane action. Every fight becomes a crusade. Every cause becomes a calling. The problem is that not all callings are benevolent, and not all crusades are just.
The Aries impulse is to act, to initiate, to assert. Neptune's influence is to dissolve, to blur, to transcend. Combine them and you get action that feels divinely inspired even when it is not. You get individuals who are absolutely certain they are fighting for truth, for justice, for God, for the future of humanity—and who may be right, or may be catastrophically wrong, and may not be able to tell the difference.
This transit favors the dissolution of the ego in service of a cause. It is excellent for those who wish to lose themselves in something larger. It is dangerous for those who cannot distinguish between losing themselves and destroying others. AstroStyle's guidance to keep "your head in the air and your feet on the ground" has never been more relevant. The spiritual warrior must remain grounded even as they fight for the heavens.
From March 30 to October 22, 2025, Neptune offers a preview of its Aries transit—a seven-month taste of what the next fourteen years might bring. This is not enough time to fully integrate the energy, but it is enough to feel the shift. The collective may experience a sudden intensification of ideological conflict, a rise in spiritual movements that demand action rather than contemplation, an increase in individuals who feel called to fight for causes they cannot fully explain.
During this preview, Neptune will station retrograde and retreat back into Pisces, giving us a moment to catch our breath before the permanent ingress in January 2026. Use this time wisely. The questions that arise between March and October 2025 are questions you will be living with for the next decade and a half.
The retrograde period from October to December 2025 offers a final opportunity to process the lessons of the Pisces transit before the Aries energy becomes permanent. What have you learned about collective consciousness, about the boundaries between self and other, about the difference between intuition and delusion? Take those lessons with you. You will need them.
Neptune's first retrograde in Aries occurs on July 7, 2026, at 4° Aries 25′, initiating a five-month period of review that lasts until December 12, 2026. This early retrograde sets the tone: the transit will not be a straight line of dissolution but a recursive process of entering, retreating, and entering again. We will have multiple opportunities to reconsider our battles, our causes, our spiritual convictions.
The degree of the first retrograde—4° Aries—suggests that the initial work of this transit will involve the very beginning of the sign: issues of identity, self-assertion, the fundamental question of who we are as individuals before we take up our causes. The first years of Neptune in Aries may dissolve our sense of individual self before offering us something to fight for.
As the transit progresses through the degrees of Aries, the dissolution will move from the self to the assertion of the self in the world. By the time Neptune exits Aries in March 2039, an entire generation will have been shaped by the experience of fighting for visions that were never entirely clear, of losing themselves in causes that felt sacred, of learning to distinguish between spiritual warfare and mere destruction.
Neptune in Aries is not inherently dangerous, but it requires consciousness. The same energy that fuels genuine spiritual warriors can fuel false prophets, ideological extremists, and individuals who convince themselves that violence is a form of transcendence. Saturn Season's observation that "there is nothing more sadistic than an infant, waving his pistol in my face" captures the shadow side of this transit: the eternal child who has found a weapon, the undeveloped ego that has discovered a cause, the unevolved individual who mistakes their own aggression for divine will.
The task of this transit is to dissolve the immature self while preserving the mature will. It is to fight for causes that matter without losing the ability to question whether they matter. It is to act with conviction while remaining open to the possibility that your conviction is misplaced. This is not easy. Neptune in Aries makes it harder by blurring the line between healthy doubt and paralyzing confusion.
But the potential is profound. This can be a transit of genuine spiritual warriors—individuals who have dissolved their egos not into nothingness but into service, who fight for causes larger than themselves with clarity and compassion, who have learned to hold their convictions lightly even as they hold them strongly.
Neptune does not cause events in a simple linear sense, but it does dissolve boundaries around how we experience conflict. During Neptune in Aries, wars may feel more ideological, more spiritual, more existential. The danger is not necessarily more wars but wars that feel holy to those fighting them—making compromise and de-escalation more difficult. The opportunity is that genuine commitment to justice and principle may increase, as individuals become willing to sacrifice for causes they believe in.
Neptune in Pisces (2011-2025) dissolved collective boundaries—we experienced confusion and compassion at the group level, with social media echo chambers and collective emotional experiences. Neptune in Aries shifts the dissolution to the individual level. The question moves from "What are we feeling?" to "What am I fighting for?" The spiritual work becomes more personal, more active, more oriented toward individual conviction and action.
Neptune in Aries affects everyone because it shapes the collective atmosphere in which we all live. However, the house in your birth chart that contains Aries will show where this transit is most active for you personally. If Aries is in your first house, the transit directly impacts your identity and self-concept. If it falls in your seventh house, relationships and partnerships may feel the dissolution most strongly. The transit also aspects other planets in your chart depending on their degrees.
It depends on what kind of spiritual practice. Contemplative, passive spirituality may feel less satisfying during this transit. Neptune in Aries favors active spiritual engagement—practices that involve service, advocacy, fighting for causes, or taking principled action. The spiritual warrior archetype is strong here. If your practice involves losing yourself in something larger and then acting on that dissolution, this can be a powerful transit. If your practice involves quiet withdrawal from the world, you may find the collective energy pulls you in a different direction.
The next fourteen years will ask us to find our fights and question them simultaneously. Neptune in Aries is the spiritual warrior's transit—but the most important battle may be learning to distinguish the holy war from the ego's crusade. Keep your head in the air and your feet on the ground. The dissolution is coming, and what we fight for will reveal who we are.