Astro Forecast 3.29.25: Neptune in Aries Is Ready To Party Like It's 1862
Astrological recurrences that echo multiple violent transitions in history are here to teach us a lesson we never seem to learn.
What is happening?!
Somewhere in the timeline that encompassed a little before and a little after the U.S. election last year, I sat next to my husband on our bed, doomscrolling. It was evening in November, so the windows next to me were glossy black mirrors reflecting the following blue light atrocity as it emanated from my phone: a music video, questionably categorized as rap, featuring some white dude and, I shit you not, Roseanne Barr. I’m not sure what either of them were doing could be considered rapping, unless you count racist, somnambulant mumbling and an imitation of Klan Creek’s Angriest Goose rapping, but words mean absolutely nothing these days, so, sure, why not? They were rapping. Roseanne and a dude whose stage name I can only hope is ‘Wyte EmbarrA$$ment’ were on my phone rapping about freedom(definition unclear), guns(love them), Trump(Jesus), gender(two or we kill you), and white supremacy(obvious).
You could also say these yahoos were dancing, I guess, jiggling about on a set dressed by someone who loves Hype Williams and was only lucid until about 2003. This would only be true if by dancing, you mean doing a series of shallow, sloppy squats in between holding your arms out like the Tin Man. Perhaps the choreographer decided that was the best move for showing off their MAGA clothing in all of its oversaturated, nationalist glory; there were so many fake gold chains, hats and sunglasses that I wouldn’t know it was Roseanne Barr at all if not for her distinctive, crackly whine. Maybe I’m wrong and it wasn’t Roseanne Barr? Looking back, it may actually have been Bruce Vilanch.
Anyway, Roseanne/Bruce and Whyte EmbarA$$ment waved guns and flags around for about one and a half minutes before I pressed mute and turned to my spouse, goggle-eyed and quaking with silent laughter. Late night shadows gathered under his eyes like storm clouds, and he shook his head with a heavy sigh, not seeming to find it quite as hilarious as I did. Then, he looked through me like I was a ghost and said, "We’ll never come back from this.”
Sometimes I think of America as a badly closed wound. The most recent place where humanity slashed the skin of the Earth to establish ourselves was hastily stitched by human traffickers and rapists before a proper surgeon could take a look, so the wound did what wounds do, and festered. The stars, planets, gods - whatever you like to call that unknowable intelligence lurking in our primitive brains, is not meant to intervene, but to illuminate our human innards like the soulless fluorescent lights above an operating table.
That objective illumination, cruel as it is, was doing a lot of work this week. On Monday, as Mercury made a conjunction with our sun in Aries, we were gifted concrete proof of the rank stupidity of ruling class lackeys, who discussed bombs, murder, and war with the maturity fourth graders, emojis and spelling errors included. Mercury is in retrograde of course, which means we were treated to this public Signal communication snafu after the fact, the missiles in question having struck their targets weeks ago. It doesn’t get more literal than that, folks; the planet of communication fucking shit up in the realm of war to embarrassing, disastrous effect. Neptune, who seems to have had enough of living in the shadows, threw his delusional hat into this circus where it landed on D.O.J. head Pam Bondi, a.k.a. Fascist Tits McGee.
While Mercury worked overtime to expose communications, Neptune blessed Tits with his penchant for obfuscation and deception so that she could keep a straight face while lying, and directing others to lie, about what constitutes classified information. Once a journalist released the un-redacted chat, listing weapons types, target locations, and launch times, Tits and Co. still insisted it’s no big deal to include a journalist in such matters, and also LOOK EVERYONE IT’S JOE BIDEN AND GUNS PEW PEW! They say the devil works hard, but Neptune clearly works harder in Pisces when it comes to blurred boundaries, denial, and delusion. I hope Tits and Co. enjoyed their Orwell cosplay, because for better or worse, the vibes are about to take a major turn beneath a solar eclipse and Neptune ingress into Aries.
This weekend might dramatically shift the tone of our collective vision and subconscious motivation; the hidden or shameful aspects of our society that seem to crop up every 165 years or so. It isn’t just the end of one transit and eclipse cycle; it is the completion of an era that began February 13th, 1862, Neptune’s last ingress into Aries amid the violence of America’s nascent civil war. Though the northern Union states would ultimately defeat the southern Confederacy states, preserving the republic and formalizing the Emancipation Proclamation, the hollowness of northern motivation rendered everything moot in the end. The number of concessions and capitulations afforded southern gentry during Reconstruction guaranteed from them a half-hearted embrace of the new social contract and set the stage for Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Movement, and the very situation we find ourselves in today; living in two realities that are largely divided by the Mason-Dixon Line. Ground zero for the incision that would slowly infect the host with its rot. Moments of inflammation like The Great Depression, McCarthyism, or the Vietnam and Korean wars, etc., never prompted any deep cleaning, probably because people in power have a vested interest in our permanent illness, ensuring that we’ll never recover. That we’ll never come back from this.
Why would this affect me? Who cares what the sun or Neptune does?
Eclipses can be liberating and crushing all at once, as can staying abreast of the global chaos that Pluto whispered to us like sweet nothings when he stepped into Aquarius months ago. This partial occultation stands out because it looms so close to the Neptune ingress, almost as though our sun and moon are transmitting a desperate message to our collective subconscious before we plunge headfirst (Aries always does things head first) into an ocean of fire.
Our massive sun has been a proxy for leaders, ideals, and power throughout the ages, from fertile Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt all the way to the bullshit of the Roman Empire. Without the tangible vitality of sunshine, wiggly, hairless humans would wither and die alongside crops and livestock, and they fucking knew it. Whether they were worshipping Shamash, Helios, Sol, or Apollo, ancient people built their spiritual and physical lives around the rising and setting of this great golden orb, and the solar gods that sprung from our ancestors’ imaginations typically ruled over their less significant, more specialized deities like Bast, the Egyptian war goddess, or Jim Bob, god of mullets. That orientation sparked the connection humans built over the ages between the sun and esteemed rulers of men, who would crown themselves in solar, golden circles once they got hip to the Bronze Age.
From that perspective, any solar interruptions or strange goings on with yon yellow dwarf star posed great danger to patriarchs, kings, and clan rulers, who would tread cautiously during eclipses, lest they themselves get swallowed by a shadow. Thanks to our love of patriarchy, the sun would also come to represent fathers, grandfathers, and the established social order - so eclipses could indicate both the death of solar figures and/or a deterioration of their power.
In this foul year of your Lord 2025, the sun will be eclipsed in Aries; the house of war, strategy, violence, carnality, masculinity, and severance. The ruler of this astrological frat house, Mars, holds the reins while this eclipse takes place, and man, can he be irritating. He’s hotheaded, stubborn, prone to flying off the handle in the best of circumstances, and right now he’s debilitated in Cancer, so his mood is shit. After months of navigating the soft, passive aggression inside the Temple of The Crab, spicy Mars is probably spoiling for his agency and some action - which he will get, once he has the sun, moon, and Neptune back in his domain.
We are going to feel very different, individually and otherwise, with all this martial energy; excitable, assertive, strategic, and impatient for change. If Pisces is unending confinement in a murky dungeon, Aries opens up the cell and marches us to freedom, because they represent the end and beginning, respectively, of the zodiac belt. This banner year for endings and beginnings, as well as demarcation lines, will be showing us a future very different from the past. Like the Covid-19 pandemic, we can expect something to change so definitively that it divides our ‘before’ existence from our ‘after’ existence, and unless you’ve been living in a remote cave since 2016, some part of you knew this was coming. If, perchance, you have been living in a cave, I assume you’ve moved out, and if so, is it for rent?
When do I have to deal with this?
In the good news department, this is only a partial eclipse, so I’m holding out hope that our lives will only be partially chaotic as we soak in its effects, which are typically loudest the week of occultation. Remember that this is a new moon, though, so her lessons will reverberate for a full lunar cycle. Goody!
In the bad news department, Neptune spends a whopping fourteen-ish years in each sign, so we have until 2038 to collectively navigate an angry, astral ocean. (He dips back into Pisces for a bit when he retrogrades, because he’s a nebulous weirdo.)
3.25.25 - 3.31.25: Venus Conjunct Neptune in Pisces Lets Us Fool Ourselves And Reject Reality For a Bit Longer
Venus in Pisces: Groovy art teacher who talks about ‘the divine feminine’ a lot and encourages students to ‘draw what they feel’, definitely owns a yoni egg
Neptune in Pisces: Your friend’s musician uncle who was never a CEO, but he convinced himself that he was during an acid trip in the seventies and he isn’t hurting anyone, so why burst his bubble
Nobody knows what these two are talking about, but it will more decipherable if we get really, really high. Lovely lady Venus is still in retrograde, and it turns out she’s got some collaborating to do with Neptune before he fucks off to Man Land. Creative endeavors, partnerships, justice, and aesthetics are typically the focus of our girly planet, so she’s doing a little mind meld with Neptune, ruler of shadows and the subconscious. Pay attention to your dreams, close partnerships, and artistic impulses during this aspect; it may be that Venus is planting a seed that will burst to life once Neptune is firmly ensconced in Aries.
3.29.25: The Sun and Moon Conjoin in Aries, Wreaking Havoc on the Establishment
I think we’ve covered this, but the cliff notes are as follows; keep an eye on dads, kings, and titans of industry, because powerful figures will experience the symbolic darkness of Luna’s shadow. Established ideals and concepts of order can also get dinged up under the moon shadow, so my plan is to lay low and remain positive, yet observant. (I’m lying, I’ve never been a positive person at any stage of life. I will be under a blanket in my living room, screeching in an ancient tongue and clutching an obsidian orb.)
3.26.25 - 4.1.25: Mercury Follows Venus’ Lead, Conjoins Neptune in Pisces for a Little Tete a Tete
Mercury in Pisces: Friendly neighborhood stoner who stuffs everyone’s mailbox with flyers whenever his band is playing a show
Neptune in Pisces: Your friend’s musician uncle who was never a CEO, but he convinced himself that he was during an acid trip in the seventies and he isn’t hurting anyone, so why burst his bubble
Just like Venus, Mercury has important information to pass on to Neptune in the last degree of sensitive Pisces, but the nature of these archetypes can muddle the message or make it feel like secret, esoteric code. This aspect is like going to a punk show at a club with a shitty sound system; the lyrics are important, political, and profound, but you can barely hear them over the electric guitar fuzz. This is typically when the audience gets drunk enough that the sound ceases to matter, but the message is still being transmitted. The garbled, hidden meaning will become clear once Neptune leaves Pisces, and we’ll all be abashed to learn that we were singing the wrong lyrics for fourteen years, apparently, and every Radiohead fan knows that feeling in their soul.
3.30.25 - However Long We Survive It: Neptune Plunges Our Collective Subconscious Into Combative Aries
Neptune in Aries: Twelve stepper who stays sober with Crossfit and is now 180 lbs. of muscled testosterone, attributes his sobriety to his ‘higher power’ and forcefully proselytizes to anyone who will listen
Sometimes a pedantic breakdown is best, so consider the simplest elements of these archetypes; Neptune represents dreams, water, hidden talents, and the subconscious, and Aries is a loud, manly, martial place. Keep an eye on waterways and oceans for accidents, tsunamis, and the rusted remains of a CEO’s failed ego trip, because Poseidon will be chomping at the bit for a new sacrifice. Naval combat and disruptions in shipping might also occur, as well as disagreements about waterway autonomy.
The more metaphorical effects of this aspect include a surge in provocative art and culture, as well as interest in the occult and esoteric beliefs. As I’ve stated many times, Neptune is a fucking weirdo, and he can make us collectively paranoid, just like he did in the mid-eighties, kicking off everybody’s favorite witch hunt; the satanic panic. Considering the qualities of Aries, this archetype of communal delusion might manifest as nationalist zeal regarding the military, conscription, or the creation of entirely new, militant organizations. This is a pretty worrisome aspect of Neptune in The Temple of The Ram, so keep an eye on police, militia, and anything going on at the border.
Looking Ahead…
If I have to live with this image burned on my brain, then so do you.
Believe it or not, we have some great astrology coming up next week, reflecting our personal, newly discovered zeal and confidence. Mars will trine both Saturn and Venus, boosting our powers of persuasion, focus, and charisma, so we can all begin building the cult of our dreams! Even better, Uranus will form a sextile to both the sun and Mars, making drastic changes and upgrades possible on a massive scale. This weekends upheaval might be startling, but it leads into a moment of tremendous possibility. So if you don’t want us to start looking like the header photograph, get out there and do something about it.
Stay safe, everyone.
What a ride! Love this breakdown. Don't love that I had to see that ridiculous mess of a photo.
I love this! So irreverent and fun. But Roseanne, Christ on a cracker, she is a horror.