NEPTUNE IN ARIES: SPEEDBOATS, JEFF GOLDBLUM & THE EXALTED VERSION OF YOURSELF
･ﾟ✧ ･ﾟ✧
Wowwee, we've made it to the other side of a retrograde eclipse clusterfuck, and now Neptune is in Aries...for the first time in 164 years.
It may feel like pursuits from the past are petering out as new creative possibilities are emerging. 2025 is a punk band doing a mic check for 2026, and all the band members are babies. Toggling between old and new - everything is fast and clumsy as we settle into learning how to play these instruments.
Neptune's idealistic glam will be in youthful Aries for the next 14 years, though we are just getting a sizzle reel before it retrogrades back to Pisces in October. It's Aries-related themes will be extra expressive when Mars struts through Leo starting April 18th, notice what comes up for you during this peep show. Eventually Neptune fully pushes off the dock for its longer journey in this fire sign January 26, 2026 - March 23, 2039.
This is the planet of dreams and collective feelings...so it really sets a tone. On a personal level, wherever you have Aries in your chart will be nudged into deeper states of creativity. Think about what wonderment started to seduce you when Neptune first entered Pisces in April 2011. As it transitions into a different archetypal context, a new fascination awaits.
When I think about this mystical planet throwing pixie dust in the sign where the self-assured Sun is exalted, I see us beginning a brave endeavor: the magical act of becoming an exalted version of ourselves. Some circles call this The Great Work, The Alchemical Wedding, I like to call it: get out of our way you billionaire losers. We are converting our knowing into being, taking the wisdom we’ve learned from the Neptune in Pisces "go with the flow" passivity, and pointing our wands with more gusto.
I'm speaking optimistically, it's what keeps me sane, and well...I'm ready to move on from Neptune in Pisces annihilating all my dumb amounts of Gemini ! Neptune's soulful effects has its vices, it can often be confusing and anxiety provoking, it tends to flood us with big existential questions and hunches - but no clear answers.
Likewise, as we know - sometimes higher-forces come through the wrong people with just the right power and pathology to make something that should be groovy into geo-political goo.
For better or for worse, Neptune is an escape hatch for wherever material life is making us claustrophobic. In Aries, it wants a quick fix, a vaster solution that might not address the root cause. This karate-chop-ready cardinal sign doesn't have the patience to check where Neptune's speedboat is going and so this may be high-tide for delusional heroic acts and shortsighted opinions passed off as truth...
And yes, Neptune in Aries has historically coincided with war. Yet, none of these alignments in history have occurred in a global warming-technologied-time like ours, so I don't really know what to expect. And maybe that's the point...Aries represents new beginnings, and so what we’ve known before may not apply to whats next. I'd like to imagine that means we have a chance here to liberate ourselves from the cycles of history that have failed us. Some say Neptune in Aries will put us all in silos of self-absorption, but I disagree. When I think about Aries, the sign of willpower - being visited by the "greater will" of Neptune's vaster relational currents, I see us all discovering just how entangled our self-affirming choices are with larger tides. For Neptune in Pisces, we yearn for unity in sameness, but for Neptune in Aries - we yearn for unity in difference, the spiritual warrior of you-do-you.
“There is nowhere you can go and only
be with people who are like you. Give up.”
-Bernice Johnson Reagon
For all my fellow artists out there, prepare for your creative practice to shift. Neptune has a lot to do with the film, media and art industry. It’s fantasies ooze out of our collective storytelling and image-making. Film was born when Neptune was in Gemini, the first three-second scene of a motion picture was played in 1895. Thus, Hollywood hasn't experienced Neptune in Aries ever before.
Let’s rewind and consider the fact that movies are alluring because you get to sit and stare at people without them looking back at you. You get to experience drama without the expectation of having to do anything about it. Yet, Aries wants to jump into the ring, get involved...not just watch events, but participate. I'm curious what punk wishes will be on-demand, and how that will effect the zeitgeist.
As a reminder, Neptune in Aries primes us for the holy Saturn-Neptune combo, inching closer and closer together, culminating in 2026. It will grow in intensity when Saturn enters Aries May 24th to accompany Neptune. This might curb whatever hot blur of unbridled new vision Neptune gives us these next few months. Basically, we get to trash the house before Dad comes home. I encourage you to test your limits, let possibilities spill over. Saturn will eventually come to sober us up and reel it in.
Historically, the planet of structure (Saturn) with the planet of dissolution of structure (Neptune) is a an Eeyore-droop and often coincides with coo-coo attempts to control ideology. Likewise, you find a lot of collective unrest and uprisings in reaction to its bleakness. For example, the last time Saturn-Neptune came together in the late 80's, Romanians collectively challenged, protested and publicly executed their oppressive dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu. It's an extreme example and it came at a cost, but a good memo: people-power is potent.
Saturn-Neptune strangely correlates to historical events involving Russia. The late 80's planetary tryst was also the fall of the Berlin wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. To add to the puzzle, both Ceaușescu and Putin have a Saturn-Neptune conjunction in their natal charts.
Which brings me back to Hollywood, in particular: Jeff Goldblum. Jeff G. was born just two weeks after Putin, and so their charts are strangely similar, featuring this Saturn-Neptune conjunction...so it's pretty uncanny to see Goldblum in the film Wicked, playing Oz...an oppressive leader pretending magical powers, and the bravest punk magician doing the Great Work, dissenting against him. It's also uncanny that he's simultaneously starring in a recent TV greek-comedy Kaos, portraying an insecure Zeus, where the collective is taking their power back from the smoke and mirrors of his god-like branding.
It's an incomplete observation but or me, Jeff Goldblum gives me hope about where the mainstream psyche is at - that we are veering away from the barf-piss promise of the yellow brick road. In this way, I am somewhat excited about Saturn entering Aries late May.
I know it has its rough qualities, Aries is the sign of Saturn’s Fall. But planets in Fall are said to grapple with “reputation” because they are messy and always making mistakes in the eye of the status-quo. I am hoping this means that people let go of reputation or status and refuse the burn-out loop of external validation. I hope we strip away social constructs, define what actually makes us happy and be more resolute about building a world around that.
The official merge of Saturn and Neptune is Feb 20, 2026 at 0º Aries. It’s the very first degree of the whole zodiac, so we are leading up to a true tabula rasa reset. Dominator-culture eats itself alive so that something better may be reborn.
I'll write more on Saturn in Aries soon, actually I think I'll do a one day workshop about it. For now I hope you are doing OK. I know many of us are feeling ungrounded - this past month has been messy. As we move further into April, lingering influences may start to untangle. Please take it day by day, throw little anchors where you can - things will likely gain momentum by May. For now, I send you Venus and Mercury Retrograde blessings and hope the recent eclipses have cleared the way for new possibilities <3
*All images above are from the Acid Sweat Lodge archive