Preliminary thoughts on Neptune in Aries

Chiron conjunct North Node in Aries already brought us The Diaper Spa!

Neptune is still solidly in Pisces for another year. However, I am starting to see hints in the news of themes that might be fleshed out when Neptune moves into Aries starting in 2025.

Chiron and the North Node are currently conjunct in Aries, perhaps contributing to this foreshadowing. The conjunction was exact at 1:12:51 pm PST on February 19, 2024, at 16°45’ Aries. Chiron can be awkward, even when it means well, and I think that has come out in a recent “news of the weird” story that I will discuss later in this piece.

Warning — this post takes in enough touchy topics that I had to sleep on it for multiple nights.

When will Neptune be in Aries?

Neptune will be in Aries during the following dates, according to a Solar Fire report run for the Pacific time zone:

March 30, 2025 - October 22, 2025

January 26, 2026 - May 21, 2038

October 21, 2038 - March 23, 2039

Neptune in Aries predictions I don’t agree with

The sign of Pisces is associated with compassion for disadvantaged minorities. During the current transit of Neptune in Pisces, which began in 2011, awareness of transgender issues has grown dramatically.

In the more conservative corners of the astrology world, I have seen predictions that all this transgender stuff will go away when Neptune moves into Aries. The rationale is often along the lines that Aries is the sign of the masculine warrior — the last time Neptune was in Aries, the United States fought the Civil War, and back then, men were men!

I disagree with this viewpoint on the grounds that other astrological factors are very different this time around. The Neptune in Aries transit of the 1860s happened during an Earth Age, a period of roughly 200 years when the conjunctions between Jupiter and Saturn took place in Earth signs. As shown in a color-coded graphic by Mystic Medusa, there’s typically some fluctuation as the Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions shift from one element to the next, but all the Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions were in Earth signs from 1842 to 1961.

Strengthening the earthy vibe, Pluto was also in the Earth sign of Taurus from 1851 to 1884. This took in the whole Neptune in Aries transit from 1861 to 1874.

The Earth Age’s focus on material conditions brought tremendous improvement to our physical quality of life. When the shift into the Earth Age began in 1802, people didn’t have flush toilets, electricity, or internet in their homes. Now, we take these things for granted.

As of December 2020, however, we are solidly in an Air Age. For approximately 200 years going forward, the conjunctions between Jupiter and Saturn will take place in cerebral Air signs. During this time, people are likely to be more interested in the life of the mind than they are in the physical world. It follows that, in terms of gender issues, what’s in your brain has the potential to be more compelling than what’s physically in your pants.

I began connecting the dots in this manner while attending Christof Niederwieser’s lecture “The Corona Crisis as a Bridge into the Air Age” at Astrology University’s October 2020 summit. According to my notes, Niederwieser mentioned that trends of the previous Air Age, which took place in the 13th and 14th centuries, included radical Christian sects that found the body evil.

History doesn’t repeat itself exactly, but it rhymes. I don’t get the impression that transgender people today typically think of the body as evil. However, what they have in common with these religious groups from the previous Air Age is a sense that there is something about the physical body that needs to be transcended, even though they do so in different ways and for different reasons.

Additionally, the upcoming Neptune in Aries transit will take place during Pluto’s 20-year transit through Air sign Aquarius. Aquarius is associated with technology and innovation, so we’ll likely be more interested in following those longings wherever they lead us than in accepting whatever the material world gave us without modification.

We may need to find a new approach to certain structures that made sense during the Earth Age, such as sports leagues and public restrooms, because I don’t see the horse of gender complexity going back into the barn any time soon.

Neptune spends about 14 years in each zodiac sign during its cycle of 165 years, and that provides a useful boundary for corralling predictions about Neptune in Aries.

I can imagine a time in the next 15 years when transgender rights will be talked about less than they are today, by both people in favor of them and people against them.

I can imagine a time in the next 15 years when healthcare professionals will be more experienced with transgender medicine than they are today and better able to discern which patients are likely to have a good outcome from surgical intervention.

However, I think there will always be some people who are transgender, and I think at least some portion of that group benefits from medical help to make their body match their internal sense of their gender. (As the Human Rights Campaign points out, not all transgender people pursue surgery or other medical intervention.) The way these situations are culturally handled may fluctuate over time, but I don’t think Neptune’s ingress into Aries, or any other sign, will make them cease to exist.

The bad news about Neptune in Aries

I have long been drawn to “news of the weird” stories. Since discovering astrology, I have found that tales in this genre often reflect a concentrated form of the current astrological energies. Sometimes it takes the person who takes things a little too far to see what’s really going on.

This month’s big “news of the weird” story was The Diaper Spa, a business in Atkinson, New Hampshire. Atkinson’s Zoning Board of Adjustment ultimately voted to deny the permit for the business to provide in-person services as “a ‘physician-run diaper salon’ aimed at ‘all diaper-wearing individuals who seek acceptance, respite, and care,’” as reported by the New Hampshire Union Leader. Adult clients would have been able to wear diapers, hang out in a crib, and be nurtured like babies on the premises. Despite the denial of the permit for in-person services, it looks like the business still offers some services by phone and over the internet, according to its website.

The warrior is not the only archetype associated with Aries energy. In a recent podcast about the February 2024 conjunction between Chiron and the North Node in Aries, astrologer Molly McCord connected Aries energy to the archetype of the infant.

If one is committed to healing, connecting with the archetype of the infant can be transformative. Identifying the type of nurturing you needed and didn’t get when you were small and helpless can help you figure out how to fill those specific holes for yourself as an adult. There are definitely ways to do this that do not go to the extreme of The Diaper Spa, but I can see how Chiron meeting the North Node in Aries could push such a story into the news — and I can see how physician Colleen Murphy, proprietor of The Diaper Spa, could genuinely be attempting to help troubled adults find peace. I’d love to look at Murphy’s astrological chart because people who wind up in “news of the weird” stories often have charts reflecting intense energy that needs an outlet.

In his case study of Charlene in People of the Lie, psychiatrist M. Scott Peck noted that the patient’s willingness to become dependent and vulnerable is key to them getting the most out of the psychotherapeutic process. When the patient enters a childlike psychological state, the therapist is able to nurture them in a parental way. However, Peck added a caveat: “A crucial factor in evil, I suspect, is not simply a regressive yearning for Mother (which can be used for healing) but rather the attempt to obtain Mother without regression — an insistence on receiving mothering without relinquishing either the adult role or any of the power associated with it.”

I don’t know Murphy personally and don’t know how skillfully she handles this particular nuance of nurturing in her practice. Even so, my verdict is that I’d rather interact with a person who blows off some steam at The Diaper Spa once in a while than interact with the sort of person Peck described as evil — the sort of person who is psychologically a great big baby but won’t admit it, often rigidly and vehemently insisting that they are the most rational adult in the room to boot.

In my view, a search for healing that wanders into some strange or misguided places is better than no search at all. Unfortunately, many people aren’t even trying to heal.

Stephen Fry

, though not an astrologer himself, recently provided a wonderfully vivid description of my worst fears for the coming Neptune in Aries transit:  

George Orwell wrote in Nineteen Eighty-Four, ‘If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.’

Maybe a more accurate (and equally terrifying) prophecy would be, ‘If you want a picture of the future, imagine Veruca Salt stamping her foot and crying “I want it now!”’– for ever.’

During Neptune’s transit in Pisces, discourse about victimhood and suffering tended to focus on identifying the groups that were the most downtrodden. A transgender person was oppressed because they were transgender, a Black person was oppressed because they were Black, and so on.

Sometimes banding together as a group is a necessary approach. It can get things done. However, Pisces energy in excess has the downside of erasing the individual. Ask Dave Rubin or Candace Owens — of course, people who happen to be gay or Black are individuals with their own viewpoints just like anyone else, but the gay person or Black person who diverged from the opinions that their identity group was expected to hold had a rough time during Neptune’s transit in Pisces.

When Neptune moves into individualistic Aries, this dynamic could potentially shift. Victimhood won’t necessarily be a team sport anymore — it’ll be each person’s inner Veruca Salt for himself, herself, or themself. How totally exhausting for pretty much everyone!

That said, even this unpleasant side of Neptune in Aries might have a fringe benefit. The rumor mill is presently full of paranoid speculation that the collective will soon be under total control, whether this is to happen through the action of some worldwide totalitarian government or nanobots in people’s brains or whatever other means. A lot of this is all fart and no shit, but there are potentially a few grains of truth, especially if one were looking at the current Pluto in Aquarius transit in isolation of other factors. It is believable that, under the influence of Pluto in Aquarius, someone could get carried away and take a well-intentioned quest for the common good to a bad place.

Some variants of the rumors involve claims that the United States will get rid of its current money system and replace it with a central bank digital currency (CBDC) that will be doled out as universal basic income. Allegedly, you’ll get a certain amount each month, but whatever you don’t spend will expire at the end of the month, so you won’t be able to save enough money to free yourself from your captors.

Do you really think your local Veruca Salt is going to put up with that treatment? She wants to buy what she wants when she wants it! She may be absolutely unbearable, but at least she might be our most realistic hope against the totalitarians.

Extra credit: A “news of the weird” story from the archives

The story of The Diaper Spa reminded me of another wacky news story that involved the theme of nurturing gone awry.

A woman on a Delta Airlines flight from Syracuse, New York, to Atlanta, Georgia, allegedly breastfed her pet cat while riding on the airplane. Newsweek reported that the incident was leaked by a flight attendant to TikTok on November 2, 2021, though the TikTok post had been taken down by the time I became aware of the story in December 2021.

Assuming the incident was fresh in the flight attendant's mind when the TikTok post was made, I constructed the chart for November 2. According to records I was able to find on FlightAware in December 2021, Delta Airlines flight 1360 typically left Syracuse a little after 12 pm and arrived in Atlanta a little after 2 pm. (Upon rechecking FlightAware this past week, that flight number appears to have since been reassigned.) While it is unclear at what point in the flight the incident took place, I used 2 pm, Atlanta.

When I originally looked at this chart in December 2021, I was surprised to find the Moon in Libra. I was expecting Moon in Cancer (breastfeeding) or Moon in Leo (cats, drama). As I look at it again now, though, the Moon in Libra makes a lot of sense because it’s closely opposing Chiron in Aries.

For comparison, I have generated the chart of the meeting of Atkinson’s Zoning Board of Adjustment where the permit for The Diaper Spa was denied. According to the website of the Town of Atkinson, this board’s meetings take place “at 7:30PM on the second Wednesday of each month, if applications are received.”

The chart of the board’s most recent meeting on February 14, 2024, has the Moon in Taurus conjunct Jupiter. This could reflect Colleen Murphy’s likely sincere intention to nurture her clients in a sensual way. However, that Moon-Jupiter conjunction squares Pluto and Mars in society-oriented Aquarius, and Murphy’s permit application was denied at least partly on the grounds that her plan to serve in-person clients in a residential neighborhood would decrease the value of neighboring properties.

The conjunction between Chiron and the North Node is nearly exact in the chart of the meeting. It is sextiled by Mercury in Aquarius, which perhaps contributed to issues of nurturing being talked about at the meeting and in the news. Mercury is part of a big 5th house stellium in the meeting’s chart. The 5th house has to do with children, and that was a major part of the conflict over Murphy’s business, pitting Murphy’s intention to help her adult clients with inner child issues against concerns for the well-being of actual children in Murphy’s neighborhood. 

For more of my hot takes on current events, buy my book Impossible Dreams: Hopes, Fears, and Expectations for Saturn in Pisces!

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